


Relative Worth

by RunekeepersHymnal



Series: Roll that Dodecahedron! [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Allusions to Body Horror, Allusions to Suicidal Ideation, Allusions to abandonment, Anxiety Attacks, Body Horror, Bugs & Insects, Canon-Typical Violence, Critical Role Spoilers, FIx It, Food, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Misunderstandings, Multi, Mutual Pining, Non-Consensual Touching, Other, Power Imbalance, Resurrection, Self-Hatred, Slow Burn, Soul Selling, Temporary Character Death, Threats of Slavery, Threats of Violence, google translate, threats of dubious consent, threats of mutilation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2019-06-18 11:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15485127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunekeepersHymnal/pseuds/RunekeepersHymnal
Summary: My first fic for this fandom. AU post episode 26. Caleb has considered a thousand ways of gaining more power since he escaped the asylum, but Mollymauk’s death pushes him over the edge. A peculiar deal is the result.





	1. Beggar

He stood in the frozen field, under the light of two moons, one pale and brittle and bright, and the other, full as well, but further and faded, a bruise in the black. It was stupid to be standing alone, after this, after everything, but he could not bear to do what he was about to if it failed, and the others were there to witness it.

 

“You have never had a truer or more devout follower, Moonweaver  Sehanine,” he said softly, breath curling in the air, turning his words into clouds he could only hope would reach her, “but from what I know of you, you are the sort of goddess who would be kind, even if he were not.”

 

Caleb swallowed.

 

“He has been yours for two short years, and followed your commandments, but there is so much more that he has left to do.  _ So _ much. He has had partners, but has he had a lover? Has he loved, and been loved? There are memories that he has yet to forge, Moonweaver, and so I come to beg.”

 

Caleb laid one of Molly’s lovely symbols to his goddess on the frosted ground, and got down onto his knees before it.  

 

“And though I do not think it is the best way to reach you, I have nothing else, so I have also come to bargain, if not through you directly, well…”

 

He fumbled in his own coat, and brought forth the symbol of the Archeart he had found among the Merrow’s horde.  

 

“It is probably terribly unwise to petition two gods simultaneously, but… I think perhaps you would be in agreement, regarding this. Archeart, Mollymauk Tealeaf was not of the fey, but I could feel your touch about him. He inspired so much beauty without restraint or hesitation. He was himself a forgotten magic, made of it entirely. So… I offer this bargain.”

 

Caleb took a deep breath.

 

“Return him to us, return Mollymauk Tealeaf, not Lucien, not Nonagon, but  _ our Molly, _ to life, and you will have your most devout walking this world again, Moonweaver. And Archeart, I will serve you. I am not what you would wish in a follower, I know; I have no beauty or grace to me, but I am a clever man, and I will pursue your mysteries. I will learn and I will uncover, I will unbind the past to undo the ugliness I have wrought and to bring your work closer to the present. Please, please, let that be enough? I would burn my books and start anew, from scratch, if you wish it. I would burn myself that something better might emerge from the ashes. If that something was Molly, that would be… that would be far more than enough.”

 

The night was silent, not a shifting of a wind or breeze, the light of the moons unchanged, steady, and in this bitter air, it was difficult to feel it as anything other than indifferent and cold. 

_ I am so stupid, _ Caleb thought, looking out on the frozen, empty fields. Perhaps if it had been autumn, the Moonweaver would have heard him. Perhaps if it had been Midsummer, the Archeart would have attended, overlooking the shabbiness of his prayer and the squalid petitioner who made it. But here it was, bitter winter in the north, intent only to grow colder.  

 

Because he dropped his face into his bandaged hands in despair, Caleb did not see the shift on the horizon, he did not see the moon swell out of its time to press closer to the frozen ground. He did not see the colors begin to streak across the black of the night in slow motion, ribbons of colorful light painting the heavens, far from the Elvenpeaks.  He did not see the stars that started to fall across the sky, leaving bright streaks like threads of golden hair mixed among the blue-black. 

 

He did not see the Door appear. 

 

But he did hear the knock upon it, and Caleb Widogast raised his head.

 

He did not remember having picked up either of the holy symbols, but he had one in each hand that he would have sworn empty only a moment before.  The metal of each should have been far colder, should have bitten and burned his skin with it, but both were blood warm, as though they had been tucked against his chest this whole time. 

 

The Door was freestanding in this mean field, seemingly carved of ivory, streaked with pale gold, the knob the color of a harvest moon over the Zemni fields. The top curved, an archway, the moon hanging above it with only a sliver of black in between, as though mirroring itself here on the ground. 

 

Caleb glanced beyond it, barely able to make out the shape of the tents in which Beau and Nott were still, he hoped, asleep, wrapped in his silver thread.  The knock came again, a bit more insistent, impatient. 

 

Caleb staggered to his feet, pins and needles burning in his legs. He wound the leather cord of each of the holy symbols around his wrist to keep his fingers free. His skin and bones felt too small to hold so much hope, so much desperate longing that he had been heard, that there was something more, something else, and that all he had to do was open the door. He fumbled for the knob, and it was warm under his hand, and he turned it and pushed and lurched forward to find…

 

Not Molly.  

 

Oh.

 

He collapsed to his knees again, not onto the crunching frost and frozen ground, but into soft moss and flowers, into summer itself, but it was not at Molly’s feet he fell, not Molly’s perfumes that he drew into his lungs as he heaved a sob, but honeysuckle and something carnal, something green beyond green.

 

“There there,” the man who stood before him said in a voice that seemed not quite suited to Common, though who was Caleb to judge? “You do not know me yet, how can you decide if you are disappointed?”

 

Caleb could not collate all this information with his sorrow making such a din inside him; he could not find it in him to raise his head.

 

“Oh for… have a word with him, won’t you?” the man sighed, and suddenly there were soft paws on his knees, and a familiar triangular face butting into his.

 

“Frumpkin?” Caleb whispered, reaching for his cat with shaking hands. “I… but I did not summon you.”

 

“You did not,” the man said, and as Frumpkin clambered up Caleb’s stooped shoulder to drape about his neck, all without being asked, Caleb finally found it in himself to look up.  

 

The man was beautiful, elvish, a ruby among all this greenery. The red of his hair made Caleb’s seem like the mere smear of clay, the fair gold of his skin, the fine arch and plane of every bone the picture of unearthly elegance. All about them was green, scattered with splashes of color that rivaled Molly’s.

 

Molly would have loved it here, and the pain of that thought ran through Caleb as sharply as the Clockwork Warden’s spear had done. 

 

“This is the Feywild,” Caleb whispered, taking in his surroundings. He looked over his shoulder, but the door was gone.  “That is how you are here when I did not summon you, isn’t it, Frumpkin?”

 

“Clever boy,” said the man, and rather than helping Caleb up, he folded one leg beneath him and descended to the soft meadow floor himself, a princely sprawl as he propped his chin in the heel of one hand. “Clever, clever Caleb Widogast.”

 

Caleb swallowed hard. He was sure he was sullying this place just by being here. How could Frumpkin not despise him for pulling him from this to be by Caleb’s side?

 

“Forgive me,” Caleb said softly, “but are you the Archeart?”

 

The man laughed, great delighted peals that sent him tipping onto his back, then rolled his head to look at Caleb once more.

 

“No, dear boy,” he replied, “I am not. I am terribly flattered, however, and I am not an easy one to flatter. You may call me Artagan, if you like. I am not the Archeart, but my ultimate goals are their ultimate goals as well, I think you’ll find, and they coincide with many of Sehanine’s as well. Thus, I have answered your call. Took you  _ forever  _ to open that door, dear boy; have you any idea how much more slowly time passes here than there?”

 

Caleb blinked, overwhelmed and astonished.  

 

“If you are not the Archeart, then… you are one of the Archfey?”

 

Artagan’s delighted smile eased into something more satisfied, more proud.

 

“Precisely,” he replied. “You’ve made up for the time it took to answer the door, that’s certain. Clever, clever, clever. So, my clever boy, why do you think that you’re here with me now?”

 

Caleb petted Frumpkin.

 

“Because I came begging,” Caleb answered, choosing his words carefully. “And while the Archfey can be kind and generous, I would never presume that I could impose upon such as you for nothing in return.”

 

“No,” Artagan agreed. Frumpkin jumped down, and Artagan reached up, fingers touching Caleb’s cheek and pressing him inexorably to the ground so that they lay facing side by side, more like schoolboys sharing secrets than a very-nearly-god and a barely-even-human. “The Moonweaver was moved by your ardor, the Archeart by your passion, but I was moved by your tears and persuaded by your offer.”

 

“Can you bring him back?” Caleb asked, searching eyes so green that the foliage around them both dulled slightly by comparison. “Mollymauk and not his past, as he was before we lost him?”

 

“I can,” Artagan replied, calm and pleasant. “I can bring him back in his own scarred skin, strange and lovely and him, his soul, those memories he considered his, I can bring back the man who brought himself back once. I can give you this thing that you want, the way that you want it, no strings, no catch, no children’s story trick. No barbs or poisons hidden, him as he was, as he is, as he is meant to be. The Moonweaver would not allow me to do otherwise. But I am allowed to exact a price. What would you give me?”

 

“What do you want?  What do you need?” Caleb asked, hope warring with caution. “I would not presume to offer you my possessions, as I doubt you have much need for copper, or for rags. Everything else is not mine to give. Frumpkin is on loan to me only, his own soul, his own being. The same is true of Nott, who could leave me any time she wished. All I have is myself.” 

 

Artagan considered.

 

“Would you give me one of your hands?” he asked. 

 

“Yes,” Caleb replied without hesitation. Artagan hummed, picking up one of Caleb’s hands in his and feeling the bones beneath, raising it to his mouth and touching Caleb’s fingertips to his lips.

 

“There is much that would be difficult to cast without a hand,” Artagan pointed out, the breath of his words slipping between Caleb’s fingers.

 

“I could learn,” Caleb replied.

 

“If I took both?” Artagan asked, picking up the other and holding them both between them as though he meant to ask Caleb for a dance.

 

“I would find a way,” Caleb assured, proud that he didn’t tense, that he didn’t even hint that he might pull away. Artagan looked pleased, though his expression hadn’t changed from his serene benevolence.

 

“What about your tongue?” 

 

“Yes,” Caleb nodded, offering no resistance as Artagan released one of his hands and reached up, running his thumb over Caleb’s bottom lip, drawing his mouth open just slightly as Artagan mirrored him. Caleb could feel the warmth of Artagan’s fingers as the air cooled his tongue, and perhaps Artagan was about to reach in and tear, Caleb had agreed, after all.

 

“Your eyes?” Artagan asked, dropping Caleb’s other hand and laying his own palm over Caleb’s eyes, blocking his vision. “Would you give me those as well?”

 

“I would,” Caleb answered, eyelids twitching against the light pressure of Artagan’s hand.

 

“You would never read another book or spell, never see the face of the one I would restore to you,” Artagan pointed out.

 

“Perhaps he would be willing to read them to me, and I could hear him,” Caleb said. Artagan laughed, his touch shifting as he moved unseen.

 

“What if I deafened you, too?” he whispered in Caleb’s ear. “Everything dark and silent?”

 

“I think that he would write on my skin, then,” Caleb answered, the heat of Artagan’s chest closer to his face as he loomed over Caleb’s body. “One letter at a time. I have seen him juggle, after all, I think he would be clever enough. The tip of a claw instead of a quill.”

 

Artagan chuckled, soft and velvety by Caleb’s neck, his wild curls slipping over Caleb’s skin like the softest, most silken fur. 

 

“So fearless,” Artagan purred. “So selflessly clever-brave.”

 

“You know I am not,” Caleb said. “You know that I am terrified.”

 

Artagan drew his hands away and pushed Caleb’s shoulder so that he fell flat onto his back. Caleb left his eyes shut.

 

“Look at me,” Artagan ordered, and Caleb opened his eyes and looked up at him. Artagan had the curious, considering expression Frumpkin wore just before darting in for a kill. “What if I want all of you? What if I demand that you stay here and serve me, play with me, and I will bring back your friend, but you will never see him, or your other friends, again?”

 

Caleb swallowed. Abandon Nott, abandon the Nein, abandon his quest, everything… and remain here. He shut his eyes and sighed, steeling himself before looking at Artagan again. Of the two of them Mollymauk was far more likely to change the world for the better. Perhaps it would be best. 

 

“I would,” Caleb said. “I would grieve forever, but I would do it. But do you really want a servant so shabby? What could I possibly do for you, here?”

 

Artagan hummed to himself, turning Caleb’s face this way and that, winding his fingers into Caleb’s hair to tilt his head back and expose his throat, leaning in closer and breathing in deeply at the skin near Caleb’s neck.

 

“You don’t fool me, under that dirt, my little… how is it they say it in your language?”

 

“How do we say what?” Caleb asked.  Artagan replied in Sylvan, a strange word that meant something between pet, acolyte, slave, treasure, toy, fascination, and none of those things all at once.

 

“There isn’t one in Common.  At home, we would have a word for that, but it would be minutes long to say it. Zemnian is a patchwork language; perhaps that is why I am like this. Pieced and stitched from rags,” Caleb shrugged. Artagan released his hair and chin, running his hands down Caleb’s face, down his throat, over his shoulders to settle lightly on Caleb’s chest.

 

“Modest little witch,” Artagan cooed. “I am terribly tempted to keep you here, clean you up, and pamper you until you learn vanity.”

 

Caleb made a small noise in this throat without meaning to, and looked deep into Artagan’s eyes, letting the guarding layers of his mind fall away, taking a pained breath and remembering his history, his past, his crimes.

 

“I was vain, once,” Caleb said, willing Artagan to  _ see  _ him, to look into his eyes and know what Caleb was worth and what he could give so that they might come to a bargain that an Archfey would not come to bitterly regret. A fey deceived, who felt cheated, would be a bitter enemy, and Caleb would sooner not have another bitter master in this life. “I do not think that there are enough centuries left to restore it in me.”

 

Sympathy, pity flickered over Artagan’s face, and Caleb shut his eyes again. 

 

“If only you wished for me to repair you instead of your tiefing,” Artagan murmured, “I think I might find great pleasure in trying.”  

 

Artagan rolled away from Caleb, sitting up once more.  

 

“You are not a worthy cleric,” Artagan said, and Caleb’s heart plummeted, “Luckily for me.”

 

“I don’t… I don’t understand…?” Caleb stammered, pushing up onto his hands, sick to his gut with his failure. 

 

“You are not worthy to be a cleric of the Archeart. Perhaps someday, but you hate yourself far, far too much,” he said, as though he had just rescheduled a dinner and not dashed all of Caleb’s feeble hopes. Caleb started to retreat, to curl in, and Artagan’s hand shot out, grasping his chin again, forcing Caleb to look at his face.

 

“But I can act as intermediary. And I  _ want _ to,” Artagan said, taking the broken threads of Caleb’s hope and tying each one to his fingers with a hungry expression. “I  _ want _ you beholden to me, because I am selfish, and it sounds like fun.”

 

Artagan let go of his chin and placed both hands on Caleb’s shoulders.

 

“Make a pact with me, and I will guide you to power, more than you have been able to achieve on your own, and I will fulfill my promise to resurrect your friend. You will be my agent on the mortal plane, forwarding my work as well as that of the Archeart. We wish to resurrect respect for old magics, ancient secrets, and my guidance to help you achieve that will help you to… how did you put it? ‘Bend reality’ to your will.”

 

Caleb stared dumbly. Artagan laughed again.

 

“You offered to let me break your body, cut you to pieces, cut you off from the world. You offered  to let me keep you, to be my plaything and never see anyone you loved again. Will you loan me your power and your soul, from time to time, for the rest of your little human life? Perhaps not so very little, depending on how and when I need or want you.”

 

Caleb shut his eyes. He had given himself completely over to be an agent of a power greater than himself, once. It had cost him his family, had cost him a decade, and had tarnished and shrivelled his soul into something that, apparently, this Archfey still found worthwhile, or at least amusing.  Surely that was a bargain, to get back Molly.

 

“He speaks true,” a new voice said. 

 

A girl, younger than Jester or Beauregard, had appeared, standing a little ways off. Her pale blue skin and dark blue hair made Caleb’s heart ache for his friend, but she was no tiefling. Her dress shimmered like fog over the moon, and she held a parasol to block out the sun, under which all was gentle moonglow. The black night, full of stars, lined it above her head. 

 

“He is less moved by your grief and more interested in what fun you might provide him, but he has not lied to you.  I will lend what power I can to aid Artagan in keeping his promise to you, and once my boy is back on the mortal plane, I will help him find your other friends. There is so much more he has yet to learn, and to do.”

 

Caleb’s eyes strayed from Artagan momentarily.

 

“Moonweaver,” he whispered, and she nodded. Artagan cleared his throat, bringing Caleb’s attention back to him. 

 

“She will help, but you will be mine,” he said, a little fiercer than before. “Your pact will be with me.”

 

Caleb swallowed once more.

 

“What will be forbidden to me, in this pact with you?” he asked. Artagan relaxed slightly, thumbs sweeping over Caleb’s shoulders in an almost hypnotic rhythm.  

 

“You will make no similar pacts with any other. You will oppose the Spider Queen and all her works. You will need to attend to yourself a bit better,” he said, fingering Caleb’s coat idly. “I can see past the grime, but that does not mean I approve in the slightest. You will follow the commandments of the Archeart, after all. I will call on you to do things that I cannot on the mortal plane to further those ends. I may borrow you, bring you here from time to time, if I’m bored, to play. Nothing too dramatic.”

 

The symbol of the Archeart dangling from Caleb’s wrist seemed to warm slightly, and Frumpkin came forward and bunted his head against Caleb’s hand.

 

“When you ‘borrow’ me, can we agree that it will not be at a time when my leaving would cause harm on the mortal plane?” Caleb asked, cautiously.

 

“I suppose, certainly, that does not seem unreasonable,” Artagan agreed. 

 

“And because mortal lives are short, can we agree that I will not be gone from my world for more than the passage of a day there?”

 

Artagan frowned a little.

 

“A week,” he replied after a moment.  

 

“Three days,” the Moonweaver interjected firmly.  “No more than that.” 

 

Artagan rolled his eyes, looking over his shoulder at her.

 

“Next you will be wanting to chaperone, Lady Sehanine,” he complained.  “Three days, very well. Unless there is anything else…?”

 

Caleb looked up at the Archfey’s face, looking for hints of any deception, and knowing that it really did not matter if he found them.

 

“All right.  All right. Ja. Yes. Please, Artagan,” Caleb said, and the Archfey smiled.  

 

“Well… you already have your tome, and your familiar is already chained to you. Listen close.”

 

As Artagan leaned in, whispering instructions into Caleb’s ear, the Moonweaver’s eyes shone bright, perhaps with starlight, but it looked more like tears as she softly whispered, 

 

“Thank you.”

 

Artagan finished, then gave Caleb a peck, just at the corner of his mouth.

 

“This is going to sting,” he said, and his hand shoved Caleb’s chest, and he crashed to the soft ground, and then through it.

 

Caleb sat bolt upright.  The Door was gone, but there was a narrow rectangle of missing frost on the ground where the door had been.  Within it, the green grass flourished, dotted with tiny pale blue flowers, like stars. 

 

Caleb staggered to his feet and ran, the winter air burning his lungs, ran to Beauregard and Nott, setting off the silver alarm thread in his haste, running to the bundle and tearing at the canvas that wrapped up Molly’s body. 

 

“What the fuck--?” Beau snapped as the clatter woke her, then moaned in grief and pity. “Ah, Caleb, no, c’mon, man.”

 

“Let me,” Caleb snapped.  “I must, I have to, do not touch me,  _ let me! _ ”

 

The sheet was so tangled and Molly’s body so heavy and stiff. 

 

“Fuck,” he swore, and his hands lit, but the flames were cool blue, and he grasped the sheet. It burned away like flash paper, leaving no ash behind, Molly and his garments unaffected beneath. 

 

“Caleb,  _ the fuck?! _ ” Beau whispered. Caleb ignored her, trying to disentangle the leather cord from his wrist, when suddenly Nott was there with her dagger, cutting through the knot, helping him tug the Moonweaver’s symbol free. Caleb pressed it to Molly’s fatal wound, and got out of the way, letting the moonlight hit his ashen skin.  The edges of the wound slowly, so slowly, started to creep together. 

 

“Caleb, what did you do?” Beau demanded. “How…?”

 

“I made a deal,” he said flatly. “Don’t block the light, come around this way if you want to watch.”

 

“You made a  _ deal? _ ” Nott shrilled. “With who? With  _ what? _ Caleb, we could have waited, we had days, we--”

 

“It could not wait, Nott,” Caleb argued, shaking his head fiercely. “I could not leave him dead and waiting, no, not without Jester and Fjord and Yasha, I could not lose another.”

 

“It’s closing. Holy shit, his wounds are all closing up,” Beau whispered, crawling to the area by Molly’s head Caleb had directed her toward and staring, shaking. “The fuck, Caleb, you made a deal?”

 

“Ohhh, Caleb,” Nott whimpered, looking around and levelling her crossbow towards the darkness, searching. “Did you… did you sell your soul?”

 

Caleb shook his head.

 

“I… er… I am only renting it out,” he said, watching as the last of the wounds sealed shut into perfect, moon-pale scars.  Caleb moved around, throwing a leg over Molly so that he knelt over him. Caleb took a deep breath, drew his hand back, and slapped Molly’s still-cold face.  

 

“Hey!” Caleb snapped at Molly as Beau repeated kept repeating, “the fuck?” like a meditative mantra. “Back in the game! Time for that later!”

 

Slowly, the color of Molly’s skin began to warm.

 

“You all right?” Caleb recited, despite that Molly was not yet able to respond, and then leaned down, placing a kiss on the center of Molly’s forehead.

 

Molly sat upright so abruptly, gasping in air, that he nearly knocked Caleb out of the circle entirely.  

 

“ _ The fuck!! _ ” Beau cried yet again, launching forward to throw her arms around Molly’s shoulders from behind him.  Nott could not seem to decide whether she was going to look at Caleb or at Molly for a moment, as Molly patted down his chest frantically. 

 

“...Nonagon?” she said.  “Lucien?”

 

“Do not fucking call me that again, Nott, or I will walk to Port Damali just to throw your flask into the fucking sea, and maybe you with it,” Molly wheezed, and Nott jumped at him, feet off the ground as she clung to his neck.  

 

“It’s him! Caleb, you did it!”

 

Caleb just sat where he was, Molly’s bony shins under his thighs, and stared. Nott had scrambled to retrieve the symbol of the Moonweaver and tie the cord back around Molly’s neck. He clapped a hand to it, pressing it against his chest, and then patted Nott’s tiny arm. 

 

“Thank you,” he said to Nott, who scoffed.

 

“Thank Caleb, he's the one who--”

 

“We all had a hand in it,” Caleb interrupted, shooting Nott a quick, pleading look. Nott stopped speaking, but Beauregard didn’t get the message.

 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Beau said.  “Nott and I were sound asleep and then you started unwrapping Molly and then you slapped him and kissed him and he wasn’t dead anymore, man, we didn’t do  _ shit! _ That was all you!” 

 

Her face was all delight, and Caleb looked down at the frozen ground, shifting off Molly’s feet.

 

“Well, I’m not in a temple, and I don’t see a cleric, unless Beau’s had a serious ‘Come to Ioun’ moment,” Molly replied. Nott pulled away from him and Molly allowed it.

 

“Are you all right, Caleb?” Nott said softly, going to him.  

 

“Ja. Yeah, I am… I am fine, Nott, better than fine. I am glad Molly is back. You… you should all go back to sleep, and I will watch ‘til dawn, okay?” he replied. 

 

“Yeah, not exactly sleepy at this particular moment,” Molly said skeptically. 

 

“Me either,” Beau said, squeezing Molly so tightly that he let out a pained grunt. “Seriously, Caleb, what did you  _ do?! _ ”

 

Caleb looked anywhere but at them, at the darker of the two moons, at the ground, into the black. 

 

“I…” Caleb swallowed.  “Does it matter?”

 

“Of  _ course _ it matters, Caleb!” Nott cried, grasping the leg of his trousers. “You said—” 

 

Molly raised a shaky hand, clearing his throat as Beau finally loosened her grip.

 

“Let him be,” Molly said, though he didn’t sound terribly certain about it. “Caleb, would you mind resetting your silver thread?”

 

Caleb looked from Nott to Beau, then back to Molly, and nodded stiffly.  This was certainly the last thing he wished to talk about at this moment. Better to let Nott and Beau have their reunion with Molly.

 

“Please treat him with the healing mosses we were given,” Caleb said softly. “He will be weak.”

 

Caleb gathered his thread and slunk quietly away, resetting the thread in the frost. It wasn’t long before dawn, but he would not be taking any more chances, not for some time, and even then, not without great and careful calculation. 

 

He stood at the spot where he closed the circle, looking back to where the door had been. There should have been some sort of after-image, he thought, it had burned so bright and so powerfully.

 

“Caleb,” Beau said from behind him, softly.  

 

“Mm,” he replied, still gazing very far away. Beau gently tugged his shoulder so that he was facing her, though not looking at her face. 

 

“What the hell happened?” Beau asked, soft and without heat. “I know you couldn’t do that before. If you could have, you would’ve. You’re not enough of a fuckin’ drama queen to drag it out this long.”

 

“I did not want to suggest it because I did not know if it would work,” Caleb said, “and I could not do that to you or to Nott. Or to myself, because it would have destroyed me to disappoint you both so badly.”

 

Beau nodded.

 

“I get that. But you said you made a deal, Caleb.”

 

She let him stew in his silence for a moment.

 

“Is Nott right?” Beau continued. “Did you sell your soul to get Molly back?”

 

Caleb didn’t answer, staring at her briefly before clearing his throat.

 

“Shouldn’t you be--”

 

“Nott is taking care of Molly, Caleb, I’m taking care of  _ you. _ So tell me what you fuckin’ did, okay?” Beau interrupted.

 

Caleb sighed and gestured to the ground, sitting himself. Beau joined him reluctantly.

 

“Do you remember how I told you that Frumpkin is from the Feywild? And how Molly mentioned the Moonweaver?”

 

“...yeah?” Beau shrugged.

 

“Well. I have learned all my magic through study, a little natural ability, but mostly study. There are other ways, though.  Calianna, I believe her abilities came from her blood. Fjord’s abilities, I have no idea, he has been so secretive. Jester’s come from her faith in the Traveller, Yasha’s from the Stormlord. I have not had a god, only books, and history, but I had heard of one, the Archeart, who… well. The Archeart resonated with me, perhaps in the way that the Traveller does with Jester. And from what I know of the Moonweaver, Molly is more or less her perfect follower.”

 

Caleb rubbed his hand over his face.

 

“I have been a beggar for many years, Beauregard. So I went begging. I thought, perhaps, that the Archeart might accept me as a cleric, or perhaps the Moonweaver would have pity.  I was wrong, but there is another way to make your way in magic.”

 

“You make a deal,” Beau filled in, picking at the edge of her cloak. Caleb nodded.

 

“Yes. Not with a god, but with something… not so much less, but different. Some choose demons, or terrible things from far beyond the stars. When I begged the Archeart and the Moonweaver, someone else answered. An Archfey.”

 

Beau stared at him and then lightly punched him in the shoulder.

 

“You idiot. Fuck, Caleb, you couldn’t pick a damn demon?” Beau groaned in exasperation.  Caleb chuckled.

 

“I forget sometimes, how much you have studied,” he said.  “I met a being, named Artagan. He told me I am unworthy to be a Cleric of the Archeart, for… various reasons. But he offered to act as intermediary, and he told me how to bring Molly back.”

 

“And what does this ‘Artagan,’” Beau asked, wiggling her fingers in the air to form quotes, “get out of this deal, Caleb?”

 

“That remains to be seen. He asked for my eyes, my ears, my hands, my tongue. He asked to keep me as a pet. I told him I would agree to any of that.”

 

Beau reached up and flicked him in the forehead, much harder than she had punched him, and she knew exactly where to flick.

 

“Ouch!” Caleb cried, rubbing the spot.

 

“Asshole! Did you not fuckin’ think that we’d be just as upset if we lost you as if we lost Molly?” she hissed.  “Did you not fuckin’ think that Molly would  _ hate _ you trading yourself for him?”

 

“I thought of all of that, Beauregard, but it still seemed preferable to having lost Molly,” Caleb snapped back, trying to rub away the numbness that radiated from the center of her strike.  

 

“Well you’ve still got two hands, two eyes, a tongue, and I don’t see a little bell around your neck, so what did he get instead?” Beau demanded. 

 

“He brought back Molly, and will help me to learn greater magics, and in exchange, I will be at his beck and call for as long as I am alive. I am forbidden to make a pact with another entity, and I will probably not be on friendly terms with any of the drow for the rest of my days, which I was not likely to be before.”

 

Beau glared.

 

“That’s pretty fuckin’ ambiguous and open-ended, Caleb,” she growled, then lunged forward and hugged him. He went stiff, then slightly less so.

 

“My soul is a piece of shit, Beauregard,” he shrugged, hugging her back tentatively, wincing as she thumped his back for insulting himself.  “I will get it back when my life is through anyway. Which will be sooner rather than later if you keep hitting me.”

 

“We had time,” Beau murmured into his shoulder. “You didn’t have to do that.”

 

“It was for my own benefit, too,” Caleb said. “I will know more, learn faster. It will be good for the group. Asking for Molly back was just a bonus. We cannot get the others back without him.”

 

“You are so fuckin’ full of shit that I want to punch you to see how much comes out,” Beau replied.

 

_ Caleb, Molly’s very cold, and I was hoping you could get a fire going. You can reply to this message, _ Nott said in his head.  Caleb pulled away from Beau.

 

“Nott is asking for me. Our friends need a fire built,” he explained.  “We should go back.”

 

Beau stood up first, looming over him.

 

“I’m not gonna ask if you’re gonna be okay, because fuck, when are you ever? But if you’re  _ not _ okay, like, really not okay, you need to tell me. Because you just did something huge and we’re all gonna owe you pretty much forever, and the biggest part of that is gonna be helping you carry whatever you just picked up to make this happen.”

 

She stuck her hand out to help him up.

 

“Deal?” she asked. Caleb reached up, clasping her wrist as she clasped his and hauled him to his feet.

 

“Ja. Deal,” he said. He had no idea himself whether he was lying or not. 

 

“Get the fire going and I’ll watch ‘til the sun comes up,” she said. “We’ve still got a lot to figure out.”

 


	2. Owed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things have to get worse before they get better, particularly when everyone involved sees themselves as broken. Trying the hover text translate thing, but at this point, I'm sure you know what Scheiße means.

What a difference a day could make.

 

Molly had died beholding the face of a vicious motherfucker who had taken his family from him. He’d chosen to decorate it with phlegm and blood, because Lorenzo deserved nothing better. The people with whom he would have had last words to share were bound and gagged on a cart, they were fighting with him, the ones by his side deafened by blood in their ears, the one furthest by distance. Shame he didn’t know that clever little wire trick.

 

“Nott, what did he do?” Molly asked at last.  Nott, fussing over him with blankets and with her flask, froze in place.  “Tell me. What did Caleb do?”

 

“I… was asleep,” Nott replied cagily, eyes darting out to the distance and then back to him. “I only woke up a moment before you did.”

 

“Okay,” Molly said, narrowing his eyes at her. “What did he _say_ he did?”

 

Nott wrung her hands nervously.

 

“I don’t think he wants you to know,” she said, and as Molly opened his mouth to argue that he had the fucking right to know what had been sacrificed to bring him back, had the right to know what he _owed,_ Nott barrelled on. “So… I would have to be influenced into telling you.”

 

Molly couldn’t help it; he laughed.

 

“Okay,” he chuckled.  “Okay.”

 

He leveled his gaze at her, just staring with a flat expression.

 

“Are you charmed yet?” and Nott burst into giggles, stifled under a clawed hand. When she subsided, she looked at him, golden eyes glassy, but still very much free of influence.

 

“I missed you,” she said, and fucked if Molly wasn’t so touched by that that he flinched.  “Caleb said he made a deal. I asked him if he sold his soul, and he said he had only rented it out. I don’t know what that means, do you know what that means?”

 

Molly looked at Caleb’s silhouette off in the distance. He was letting Beau hug him.  Fuck, that was probably a really bad sign. Molly couldn’t prevent a full-bodied shudder from shaking him from the tips of his horns to the tips of his toes.  Nott made a distressed noise and pulled out her wire, the one Molly had only just been envying.

 

“Caleb, Molly’s very cold, and I was hoping you could get a fire going. You can reply to this message,” Nott said into her hands, her breath curling up into the air.  In the distance, Caleb pulled away from Beau. “I’m sure he’ll be right over.”

 

Sure enough, Caleb was walking back towards them, Beau sliding her goggles down and using her staff as a walking stick, patrolling the interior of the silver thread and looking out for threats.

 

“I’m sorry,” Caleb said, head low, not meeting Molly’s gaze. “I should have… it was inconsiderate of me.”

 

He gestured towards the small pile of sticks that they had managed to gather, and a fire burst from it easily.  

 

“I’ll join Beau on watch,” Nott said, her overlong cloak dragging a trail in the frost behind her. “You can hold onto the flask for now, Molly; you’ve earned it.”

 

A flicker of protest flashed on Caleb’s face as she went, leaving the two of them alone. Molly moved closer to the fire; though his shiver was more emotional than physical, it was still cold as fuck out in this bloody field. Caleb approached it from a bit further off, catty-corner to Molly, glancing occasionally, probably involuntarily, out of the corner of his eye at Mollymauk and looking, for fuck’s sake, guilty.

 

“You know something, Caleb?” Molly said, raising his hands to the fire, letting the warmth seep into his bones. “I think you may be the single most reliable person in my life.”

 

Caleb blinked at him, stunned, and Molly took the opportunity to look back, locking his gaze with those blue eyes for a moment before they dropped again.

 

“Not…” Caleb swallowed and sighed. “Not when it counted.”

 

Molly shook his head, trying to clear the utter nonsense of that sentence from his ears, waving his hands.

 

“I am _literally sitting here_ , above ground, because of something you did! If that's not reliability when it counts, what the fuck _is,_ Caleb?!” he cried. Caleb just stared at him, and Molly put his arms down, rubbing his chest. “Also, ow.”

 

“You need to be careful,” Caleb chided softly. “You just came back to us, you'll be weak for a bit yet.”

 

Molly groaned and lay back on the bedroll. The sky was slowly starting to fade to a deep blue rather than black, the stars less stark in the sky.

 

“Just… please. Tell me what you did. I don't mean to seem ungrateful, but I feel like it's not unreasonable to know what you did to bring me back. I owe you, and I don't even know what or how much. Please.”

 

Caleb sighed and sat, tucking the tattered tails of his coat underneath him on the ground.

 

“In the cave, you remember the symbols we picked up, ja?”

 

Molly nodded.

 

“Well. You are not the only one who found one. So I asked the god whose symbol I found, and I asked the Moonweaver as well, to bring you back to us. They are… compatible, as gods go.”

 

“Yours another fey type? I could see that,” Molly agreed, offering him Nott’s flask. “Bold move, petitioning two gods, Caleb. I'm weirdly proud of you.”

 

Caleb shrugged as he leaned forward to grab the flask and sat back down, undoing the top. Molly watched as he tipped his head back, the firelight casting weird shadows across Caleb’s throat. What a weird fucking situation.

 

“So you're telling me you're now a cleric to the Moonweaver, and I can look forward to dancing with you naked under the stars, as ritually appropriate?”

 

The already burning alcohol Caleb had started drinking must’ve burned thrice as much as he choked on it, Molly giving a thinner version of his usual uproarious cackle, sitting up as that made him feel like someone was standing on his ribcage.

 

“I'm sorry,” Molly wheezed, holding his chest, still giggling.

 

“You…!” Caleb hissed between coughs, the flames sparking slightly higher as his unusually high-proof saliva at it. “ _Böswilliger_ _Pfau!_ ”

 

Molly started laughing harder again, wincing.

 

“Oh, too mean by far, Caleb, that one had Beau’s name in it!” Molly sighed. Caleb found a waterskin and drank away the burn.

 

“To be fair,” Molly added, clutching his still-sore chest, “I think that may have hurt me more than it hurt you.” Caleb sighed and took pity, holding out the water skin. Molly took it, grabbing the hand that had handed it to him before Caleb could pull back. The Archeart’s symbol still dangled there. Molly took a deep drink, eyes never leaving Caleb’s.

 

“Now,” Molly said, wiping his mouth with the back of his other sleeve, “do you think you might stop being vague and just bloody tell me? I’m sorry for making you choke, but you’re a bit unkind to make me drag it out of you like this.”

 

Caleb sighed, pulling his coat more tightly around him.

 

“So what god did you make a deal with, this one?” Molly asked, poking the Archeart’s symbol where it dangled between them. He hadn’t really been paying attention when Caleb had picked it up, and had never bothered asking anything more about it.

 

“No, not exactly,” Caleb sighed.

 

“Wonderful, not ominous at all,” Molly muttered, slipping his hand just enough so that it held Caleb’s instead of his wrist. “C’mon, we got to you petitioning two gods at once, and somehow making a deal with neither, and yet I’m still alive.”

 

“Fine,” Caleb said, “I’m going to close my eyes. Please don’t interrupt.”

 

He shut his eyes against Molly’s intense stare, though he didn’t try to take his hand back.

 

“I asked for you back. Both moons were full, so I thought… why not? What could it harm? I told the Moonweaver what a good follower you were, but that there were many commandments you had yet to fill and many things you had yet to see. I told the Archeart that I could see their touch in you, with how much you find beauty everywhere, and try to create and inspire it as well. I offered to serve the Archeart in exchange.

 

“Nothing happened, and I… I must have shut my eyes, or… I was disappointed, I was stupid, so I must have hidden my face, so I did not see the Door until I heard someone knocking on the other side of it. A bright white Door appeared in the middle of the field, and someone was knocking on the other side.  I thought that it must be you, but it was not.”

 

Molly squeezed Caleb’s hand gently, and would’ve apologized for not having been the one knocking, had he not promised to be quiet. Caleb squeeze back, took a breath, and went on.

 

“The door went into the Feywild. I met an Archfey there who said that I was not worthy to be a cleric, but that I was worthy to make a pact through him, something a little _other_ than a god, and that he would give you back. I knew I had to be careful, to make sure that it would be you who he returned, so I was very specific, very clear. And the Moonweaver appeared, and she promised that he was telling the truth about bringing you back. So I serve him now, that Archfey, and he told me how to get you back. That’s it, really.”

 

“Can I talk now?” Molly asked, absently running his thumb over Caleb’s knuckles. Caleb nodded, but did not open his eyes yet. Molly thought about how to phrase his question; everything was still a bit fuzzy.

 

“So. Exactly how did you bring me back, exactly?” Molly asked. “What were the instructions?”

 

“I had to do what you had done to bring me back, when I could not respond,” Caleb answered with a little shrug. “I slapped you, told you to get back in the game, that there was time for that later, and I asked if you were okay, and I kissed you on the forehead and… you woke up. That was it.”

 

Right, the cave. The way Caleb’s face had shut down into bleak despair when he’d burned the priest to death.  God, Molly’s stomach was turning, and he didn’t think it was Nott’s liquor.

 

“And you sold your soul,” Molly said.

 

“It is… not sold, just… if the Archfey needs something from me, I have to help. Just while I’m alive, it is not for the rest of time or anything like that. And it was to my benefit, he will help me, I will learn new spells, it will be good for the group. It is not so dramatic as you are all making it seem,” Caleb said with a shrug, though his face tensed, shoulders hunching defensively.

 

Well fuck. Wasn’t that just a kick in the teeth.

 

He must’ve felt Molly’s hand shaking, because he opened his eyes to look.

 

“You are cold?” he asked, looking to the fire, which still burned bright, then back to Molly.

 

Fuck his third life, Molly thought to himself, because he hadn’t even been back for a bloody hour and he was crying, he was angry, and he was scared.

 

“You’re a bit of an asshole, you know that?” he said, voice steady despite the tears rolling down his face.

 

“I don’t… _Scheiße,_ I don’t understand,” Caleb said, trying to pull his hand back, but Molly wouldn’t let him. Admittedly it didn’t seem like Caleb was pulling that hard, probably not wanting to hurt Molly by doing so. Caleb’s eyes darted down to their hands and then back up to Molly’s face. “Yes, I am an asshole, but… I don’t know why _this_ makes you say so, Mollymauk, I don’t understand.”

 

“I know you don’t,” Molly spat, because fucking hell, what was wrong with Caleb? For that matter, what was wrong with himself, throwing a fit like this over such a gift?  But Molly for the shiny new life of him could not make himself stop. “And if that isn’t half the fuckin’ problem I don’t know what is. Caleb, how fuckin’ _dare_ you play off what you did for me with such a casual bloody attitude?”

 

Caleb’s brow knit, trying to piece together why Molly was angry, and the fact that Caleb was so fucking smart and still so fucking confused just made Molly angrier, which seemed to confuse Caleb even more.

 

“I told you, Molly, all I did was _ask--”_

 

“You sold your fucking soul!” Molly shouted, grabbing Caleb’s wrist with his other hand as well and shaking him by the arm, trying to break whatever communication barrier seemed to be between them, because Caleb kept saying that he didn’t understand, and how in the nine hells could he not? “Your _soul,_ Caleb!”

 

Caleb just blinked.

 

“So _what?_ ” he spat. “Why does that make you so angry, why are you angry at me, I don’t understand, would you rather I left you dead--?”

 

Molly shook his head fiercely, scowling.

 

“You fuckin’ moron, I’d cut my own throat right now if it would’ve undone your little deal, and I did _not_ want to die, Caleb, I damn well didn’t, but you’re sitting here acting like you swapped your soul for power and, oh, I don’t know, _my life,_ with the same attitude I’d expect for giving the Archfey your rag of a scarf! So yes, I’m fuckin’ furious!”

 

Caleb gritted his teeth, and Molly smelled something like a damp autumn campfire. He looked down, and saw that the hand of Caleb’s that he wasn’t holding was dug into the frozen ground. Despite all his confusion, Caleb was confining the sparks that formed on his fingers to the hand that Molly was not holding, pressing it to the frozen ground. Even knowing Molly was resistant to fire, Caleb was trying not to hurt him.

 

“My scarf at least keeps me warm,” Caleb snarled. “Rag or not, it does what it is supposed to do. It serves a purpose. My soul?”

 

Caleb laughed, hard and bitter, a spitting hiss, like a hunk of flesh, sitting in flames, rising with a pop as a bubble of fat beneath it boiled and ruptured, and god, Molly felt sick, _so_ sick, the Archfey must have tricked Caleb and brought Molly back wrong for him to feel like this. Caleb had sold his soul and not even gotten what he’d paid for, surely, but Caleb seemed not to realize.

 

“My soul was _nothing._ You have given better to beggars. You have thrown away better scraps at dinner.  You have fouled the ground with better when you took a _shit,_ Mollymauk Tealeaf, so do not presume to tell me that I made a bad bargain. I sold _nothing for everything,_ and for that, I am the cleverest man on any plane of existence you care to name. You should not be grateful to me, Molly, because I lost absolutely nothing of worth to get you back.”

 

Caleb pulled his hand away, slowly to not hurt Molly, seemingly indifferent to the accidental scratch Molly left on his hand, and got up. Molly stared up at him, tears still streaking his face, still furious, sick with it.  

 

“You _should_ be angry at me,” Caleb hissed, “because I bargained for your life so stingily. You should hate me for that.”

 

Hell. Maybe Caleb believed that to be true.

 

“Fuck you, Mister Caleb,” Molly chuckled, low and bitter, but here, alive.

 

“There,” Caleb said, smile hard, but eyes softening. “Now you are getting it.”

 

He stormed off into the dark before Molly could take it back.

  


Beau heard the shouting and stopped her patrol, Nott silently appearing beside her after just a moment. Staring into the dark, they saw Caleb turn on his heel and storm away from the center of camp, Molly trying to get up to follow but sitting unsteadily back by the fire.

 

“Fuck. Seriously?” Beau groaned. She could see Molly rubbing his face, and when she turned to track Caleb, she could see his fists flickering.

 

“They’ve never fought, not really,” Nott fretted, hands wringing. “Caleb fought with everyone _but_ Molly. And me, but…”

 

“Of course the first thing he does when he comes back to life is get into a fight with the guy who brought him back from the dead,” Beau complained. “Of fucking course. If we were in a city we could’ve gotten him like four prostitutes so he could have something in his mouth that wasn’t his fuckin’ foot, but no.”

 

Nott sighed, visibly deflating.

 

“I’ll take Caleb, you take Molly?” she muttered, looking up at Beau like she really didn’t want to take either.

 

“Ugh. Fine,” Beau answered, because neither did she.

 

Beau walked toward the fire, Nott, away from it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not trying to vilify either Caleb or Molly's behavior here- In my experience people who don't hate themselves sometimes have a lot of difficulty comprehending the actions of people who do, and people who hate themselves sometimes don't realize that sacrificing themselves for someone else, no matter how worthless they think they are, can hurt that person terribly with the best of intentions. 
> 
> It's a misunderstanding, which sometimes leads to things getting worse before they get better.


	3. Judgment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plowing through the last bit of the long pre-dawn of angst. Chapter content warning for stuff that's possibly triggering regarding abandonment issues or suicidal ideation, tags have been updated.

“We should go,” Caleb said as soon as Nott approached. She stopped a few feet away, staring up at his hunched shoulders, flames licking over his clenched knuckles. He stalked back and forth, pacing frantic, feet crunching in the thin frosted snow, like he couldn’t settle on a direction. It made her next question obvious.

 

“Go where?” she asked at last. He slowed, like he hadn’t thought that far ahead. Caleb always thought that far ahead, and then farther than that. He also thought back, and back, and back, and just like now, he could not seem to choose a direction, time yanking him in two directions. Even if he wasn’t sure, he would talk aloud, voice his thoughts to Nott so that they could make a decision, together. 

 

“Just… go,” he said, raising a hand and tugging one of the looser edges to the fabric wrapping his hands with his teeth. “We should go.”

 

“I thought you said Molly was weak--” Nott protested.

 

Caleb shook his head, spinning to face her, right in front of her in two strides, dropping to his knees. He raised his hands like he meant to grab her shoulders, but stopped himself before he got too close. Instead, they just hovered, trembling, four inches from her face, framing her.

 

The flames covering his fingers were tiny in her periphery. It was awfully cold out here, in these mountains. If she wasn't so scared, it might've felt nice.

 

“No _ , _ ” Caleb shook his head and repeated, “ _ we. _ ”  

 

He leaned in, ducking his head further as his voice shook, as though that one word somehow countered what he’d said, that Molly was weak and would need rest, that they should all be getting some more sleep, that they would need a plan so that they wouldn’t all be killed this time _.   _ Nott’s confusion must’ve been writ large on her face, because Caleb shook his head and clarified:

 

“Mollymauk is not we, neither is Beau, not really, we is  _ us,  _ you and me.  _ We  _ should go,” he said, his eyes flicking back and forth as his focus shifted from one of hers to the other, too close to take in her whole face at once.

 

“...but why?” Nott asked, hands wringing fretfully, twisting one of the rings Jester had given her to try to calm her nerves. “Caleb, I don’t understand; why do you want to leave  _ now? _ ” 

 

Caleb’s hands fell away.

 

“Nott, I don’t know what I’m going,” he said. “They make me so stupid, I don’t know what I'm doing anymore. I’m going to get us killed, because I cannot… please, Nott.”

 

Damn her fragile heart, she was so weak. Caleb never asked for much of anything, and now he was begging, and she was  _ so _ weak, but… not that weak, perhaps, not yet. This was Caleb. Caeb responded to reason, he was smart, she just had to reason with him.

 

“But… but Fjord, and Yasha, and  _ Jester, _ Caleb,” she started, “we can’t just leave them. They’ll be hurt so badly, and--”

 

“Fine, fine, we stay until we get them back, but then we have to  _ go _ , Nott,” he interrupted, his fingers leaving little trails of light as he brought his hands away to rest on the ground. “This was a mistake, this was all a mistake. We will… we will free the others, but then we must take what we need and go.”

 

Nott looked at Caleb’s face, the expressions flickering over it like a tempest, the expression for what he felt and the expression for what he wanted to show fighting like storm clouds crashing together, and she took a deep breath. 

  
This was not the Caleb who would easily see reason. He wasn’t looking for it, was running from it and trying to rationalize.

 

I am so fucking scared, Nott thought, and then said, carefully:

 

“No.”

 

Caleb blinked, stunned, but not angry, not yet anyway, and Nott let out the shaky breath she had been holding.

 

“Why not?” he whispered. Fuck, he looked like that scared little boy in a jail cell all over again, terrified to trust anyone, terrified to move or speak. Maybe this would be like then, and they could weather this together. Maybe this would bring them closer, all of them. She couldn’t reason with his head right now, perhaps his heart?  

 

“Because they are good for us. Not their powers, or their money, not anything like that,  _ them,  _ Caleb! It’s not just us anymore, we have a family now! We need to keep them safe like they would for us!” she insisted. Caleb shook his head, and she grabbed his chin, feeling the tiny tremors that shook his jaw from clenching it too tightly. 

 

“We’re good for them too!” she pressed. “We’re good for them because we’re not that good, and so we see bad people coming before they do. If we’d been awake, they wouldn’t have gotten taken, Caleb. I would’ve shot those fuckers through both eyes and the throat. You would’ve burned them down.  We make it so… so that they can keep being kind. So that Fjord can reunite orphans with their families, so Molly can redeem idiot bands of terrible bandits, so that Jester can pull her stupid pranks, and so Yasha can feel okay about it all when she has to go. We can’t leave them, Caleb, they need us!”

 

Caleb shuddered, ashen. 

 

“They do not need me, Nott,” he whispered. “You are the good sense between the two of us. I am just a few tricks.”

 

“Caleb, Molly died, and you brought him  _ back. _ That’s not a trick, I couldn’t have done that. We can’t leave them. They need us. I need them, and so do you.” 

 

The flames on Caleb’s fingers died out in the frozen grass, and he drooped, the fight seeming to leave him all at once. He folded his arms around her and hugged her, his head tucked against her shoulder as much as he could fit it.

 

“Oh Caleb, my poor Caleb,” Nott murmured, petting his hair as best she could. He drew away just enough to kiss the top of her head.

 

“Stay safe, my brave little friend,” he said, and stood up.  Nott blinked, as he turned away, and started walking towards the treeline.  

 

“Caleb?” she said after him.  “Caleb, where are you going?” 

 

He didn’t answer, or look back, and a chill struck her harder and colder than the air that surrounded them. He was leaving.

 

Caleb was leaving her.  He was leaving the group, wandering away into the wilderness. He wouldn’t be safe, he couldn’t be. Nott ran after him, his long legs outpacing hers so that she had to run hard to make up any ground.

 

She recalled, briefly, when her clan had scouted the halfling village where she would meet Yeza. She thought that she would be spotted when a halfling toddler strayed away from its mother, staggering on chubby legs towards the woods where they waited. She remembered the mother, that strident, indisputable tone she had used, and Nott took a deep breath. 

 

“Caleb Melchior Widogast, you stop walking away from me this minute,” she snapped, and her voice didn’t crack or shake at all. He had told her his full name when they had watched the prison burn from a safe distance, and had decided to keep going together for a while longer. The halfling mother had used three names for her child, walking towards its chubby doom, and it had turned back. 

 

Caleb didn’t turn back, but his step faltered, and he halted where he stood. 

 

“I don’t even belong to myself anymore.  I will fuck this up, Nott, more than I have already,” he said, turning his head just a little so that the sound carried back. “I want you to have this, to have them, please, let me do this for you.”

 

He started to move again, more slowly, but still toward the treeline. She had heard mothers threaten to send their children to bed without supper, but she and Caleb were accustomed to going to bed hungry. She had heard mothers threaten their children with monsters that would eat them (herself frequently included), but Caleb knew about those monsters, and he did not seem to care.  

 

Head and heart both well past reason, or flattery, or threatening tones. 

 

Nott drew her crossbow, aiming as carefully as she could, to where Caleb’s next steps would take them, and fired quickly, one-two-three. 

 

Caleb lurched to a halt as the tail of his coat was pinned to the ground without laying a single scratch on him, and stumbled to his hands and knees.  Nott walked swiftly and got between him and the treeline, still several yards off, and faced him. He gazed at her knees in confusion, like he wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there.

 

“Caleb, you are not thinking straight right now,” she said firmly, “so I am going to forgive you for ever suggesting that I don’t need you, and that I would be better off without you. But I am very disappointed in you for trying to leave us.”

 

She drew out her wire, cupping her hands around it.

 

“Beau, I need you to switch with me,” she said, and she couldn’t keep the tremble out of her voice. “Follow my footprints, please.”

 

She did not say that Beau could reply to her message, because Nott was in no mood to argue, and Beau was seldom in the mood for anything else. She put her wire away and inched closer to Caleb.

 

“Even if leaving made sense, which it doesn’t,” Nott said, putting her hand in Caleb’s hair, “the Gentleman still has our blood. He might not be able to find you with it because of your necklace thingie, but we have no idea what he would be able to do to you, at a distance. He could find me. I hope you still care about that?”

 

Caleb looked up at her, shock coloring his irrational despair.

 

“How can you ask me that?” he whispered. Nott sighed, kissing his forehead.

 

“Because you tried to leave, Caleb, and if anything happened to you, that would absolutely kill me,” she said, resting her chin atop his head so that he wouldn’t see her start to tear up, “so I’m not entirely sure what matters to you anymore.”

  
  


Beau trudged reluctantly back to the center of the camp and the firelight. The sun would be up fairly soon, the edges of the sky starting to look washed out. Molly was slouching close to the flames. He heard her coming, and scrubbed at his face with his sleeves.

 

Fuck. He was probably crying. Fuck. Okay. Beau could be gentle. 

 

Fuck.

 

She walked up, and sighed.

 

“So… you wanna tell me how you managed to get into a fight with Caleb when you’ve only been alive again for like… two fuckin’ hours?” she asked. Fuck, she missed Fjord’s social guidance. She missed Jester translating her comments into what Beau really  _ meant.  _ She wished Yasha were here to know exactly what Molly would need, what Caleb was going through. She just fucking missed them all.  Molly chuckled bitterly.

 

“Of course you found a way to make it my fault,” he spat, hunching further into himself and glaring harder at the fire.  “Of course.”

 

“Hey, look.... I don’t know if it’s your fault. I don’t know if it’s anybody’s fault, I don’t know what happened. That’s why I’m over here. Because me and Nott are worried, because you and Caleb didn’t ever really fight before.  So… can you just like, tell me what happened?” she asked, rubbing the back of her neck in frustration. “I know I’m like the last fuckin’ choice for making shit better, but I’m kinda all that’s available right now.”

 

Molly sighed, and nodded his head over to a chunk of blanket near the fire. Beau sat down on it and waited.

 

“I don’t… I don’t even know why I fought with him. It shouldn’t’ve mattered. I’m alive, he made that happen, that’s what should matter, I don’t--” 

 

Molly stopped, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes, and growled in frustration.

 

“Start at the beginning,” Beau said. “You don’t have to say what you were thinking, or what you think Caleb was thinking, just what actually got said.”

 

Molly took a deep breath.

 

“I asked him how he got me back, what he did. He really didn’t want to go into detail, but I kind of dragged it out of him. He closed his eyes because apparently he couldn’t say with them open for some… Caleb-based reason.”

 

Molly tipped his head back up to stare at the fading stars.

 

“Beau, he said some really,  _ really  _ nice things about me,” he said, a little quaver in his voice. “He said really nice things about me to actual gods to try to get them to bring me back to life. Things I never knew he thought, and if they were lies, I don’t know what would make him come up with them. He said that the gods didn’t answer, but that a door appeared, and that someone was knocking on it, and he opened it and it wasn’t me, and that that was disappointing. He fell into the Feywild, and there was an Archfey there, and Caleb made a deal with him. He kept saying that he rented out his soul, so now he’s got to do shit for this random extra-planar being, like that’s okay, like that’s something people do, just… rent their fucking souls to resurrect dead acquaintances--”

 

Molly cut himself off, taking a deeper breath to try to calm himself. 

 

“And I got really angry, and I shouted at him, because he was being so fucking callous about it. Like he just… like it was nothing. And I called him an asshole because  _ who does that? _ He acted like he’d just…”

 

Molly sighed, pulling at his own hair.

 

“Imagine you’re starving, and someone gives you the best meal you’ve ever had, the best you have ever eaten, and you’re back, you’re better, and you want to thank the person, because you’re fucking grateful, and they act like they didn’t do anything at all, like they handed you a plate of trash, they act like it’s just….”

 

Okay, they’d gotten to plates of trash, and Beau was running out of patience. 

 

“Are you mad that he acts like bringing you back doesn’t matter?” she interrupted, riding the line between confusion and irritation. “Because it obviously fuckin’ matters, Molly, or he wouldn’t have fuckin’ done it. If I was starving and someone gave me the best meal I’d ever had I’d still be not starving anymore--”

 

Molly waved his hands.

 

“No!  It’s… when I tried to get him to understand that I would rather be dead than have him lose his soul, because his soul is fucking important, he said that he’d traded nothing by trading his soul away, that he’d been cheap and I should hate him for it.”

 

Beau shut her mouth so quickly that it kind of hurt and definitely made a loud click.  Molly narrowed his eyes at her, lowering his hands slowly. 

 

“What?” he asked, and fuck, Beau had blown it. You don’t show shit on your face when you’re trying to calm down a cold-reading bullshitting carney who made his living off tarot cards, unless, of course, you were Beauregard. 

 

“Look… Caleb’s kind of… been through some shit. Like, way worse than my shit, probably worse than Fjord of Nott’s shit, and you can’t even remember your shit, not that it’s like… a shit contest or anything, because what the fuck, right?” Beau said, because it wasn’t a fucking contest, except for those times when it was. Mostly it wasn’t. “But he’s got reasons for being like he is.”

 

Molly’s jaw tightened angrily, and he said:

 

“And let me guess. You know what those reasons are. And so does Nott.”

 

“Yeah,” Beau said reluctantly.  Molly’s head snapped back to the fire to glower some more.

 

“This is so fucking unfair,” Molly hissed. “Nott, I get, but… you two fight all the time, you’re an asshole to him all the time!”

 

Beau blinked, and then blinked again.

 

“...are you fuckin’ jealous?” 

 

Molly stood up and shakily kicked a pebble at the fire, nearly igniting the fringe of the blanket over his shoulders before slumping back to his spot when he realized that standing wasn’t a super intelligent idea yet.

 

“Does everyone know but me?” he sulked. “I’m the least judgmental person  _ in _ this stupid group!” 

 

Beau slapped her own face, dragging her cheek down in a ridiculous expression. She was not emotionally or psychologically equipped to deal with bullshit this complicated. 

 

“You’re legit bitching,” she started slowly, because fucked if she could process this into words on any kind of reasonable schedule, “because the guy-- who clearly likes you enough to sell, rent, lease, or whatever his soul to bring you back to life-- told me something about his past that he didn’t tell you? Molly, what the fuck.”

 

Molly put his face in his hands and groaned.

 

“I’m allowed to be ridiculous. I just got done being dead. Again. And apparently Caleb selling his soul isn’t a good indicator of whether he likes you as a person or not, because he  _ did  _ tell me that his soul holds less value than his scarf, or shit on the ground. His words. So yes. I’m fucking jealous, because I’ve never hurt him or been unkind to him and he trusts you more than me and that is some bullshit.  And not the good kind.”

 

Beau scooted closer.

 

“I’m gonna put my arm around you now, and if you make this weirder than it has to be, I’m gonna punch you, okay?” she said, and Molly didn’t flinch when she gingerly put her arm over his shoulders and patted wherever her hand landed.  

 

“Caleb didn’t tell me because he wanted to,” she explained. “I told him I’d get him into the Cobalt Soul Library if he told me why he was afraid of fire. It wasn’t trust, it was extortion. I didn’t expect that it was gonna be that big a deal, otherwise I wouldn’t have pushed him. Or maybe I would’ve, I’m trying to be better but I wasn’t actually trying then. He only told Nott because he was telling me, and he didn’t want me to know when she didn’t. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone else. It’s not a fun story.”

 

“What kind of story about why someone who can create fire with his bare hands goes catatonic when he does it would  _ possibly _ turn out to be a fun story, Beau?!” Molly exclaimed, turning his head to look at her with that signature appalled expression. Beau let her hand fall away and leaned back on both behind her. 

 

“I dunno. Burning down a clown college? I didn’t think that far ahead when I asked him,” Beau shrugged. “I just saw him zone out a couple times and I was kind of worried it might get us all killed if he froze up in a fight at the wrong time. He wanted to see the library, so I decided to pry.”

 

“But he could’ve lied,” Molly pointed out. “It wasn’t like with me, Jester wasn’t doing her zone of truth thing.”

 

“He could’ve,” Beau conceded. “I don’t know why he didn’t. But he didn’t. He can be a good talker when he wants to, but even Fjord ain’t that good. He could’ve been vague, and I wouldn’t’ve pressed for details because I am the  _ last  _ person to help with that trauma shit. But he told me the whole thing.”

 

Molly was silent for a moment.

 

“When was this?” he asked.

 

“Fjord, Jester, and Yasha were all in our room. You were getting your hand-fed hooker massage.”

 

Molly nodded.

 

“Yeah. He never did come back to the room that night. I just figured he and Nott wanted to do Caleb and Nott stuff,” Molly sighed. “I never actually put much thought into what the rest of you were doing when I wasn’t around. Wasn’t my business.”

 

“I just thought you didn’t give a fuck, to be honest. So why are you so pissed about this?” Beau asked.

 

“Because now it is my business,” Molly said, not sharply, just simple and matter of fact. “At first I thought I was just going to have to figure out why Caleb thought my life is worth more than his soul, but now… I guess he would’ve done it for anybody, because he thinks that just about anything is worth more than his soul. I could give him a silver and he’d probably try to give me back change.”

 

“...I could see how that would be a roller coaster for the ego,” Beau conceded. “Like, super complimentary, and then almost kinda insulting.”

 

“Yeah,” Molly sighed, tugging the blanket more tightly around himself. “Why do you think he didn’t lie to you? Why do you think he told you so much, when he didn’t really have to?”

 

Beau felt bile rise in her throat, and turned over her shoulder to spit, as she thought about it for the first time.

 

“I think he wanted me to tell everyone so that we’d kick him out,” Beau said. “And I think he told me because he thought that I was the one who was most likely to judge him, because… well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of a judgmental bitch.”

 

“Noooo,” Molly said with fake incredulity and a crooked smile which stung Beau a lot more than it should’ve.

 

“Oh, good, you’re back to being a sarcastic asshole,” she said, picking at the corner of the blanket she sat on.  “That’s… that’s probably a good sign.”

 

“Sorry,” Molly said, quiet and guilty. “I’m feeling all raw and lost and so I’m being a shit when you’re just trying to help. I’m sorry.”

 

They sat in silence staring for a moment.

 

“Was it that bad? Whatever it was, that it’d make sense for him to think you’d want to kick him out?” Molly asked. Beau rubbed her forehead.

 

“He thought it was, which is kind of the point.  Obviously I didn’t, or-- FUCK.”

 

Beau startled as she heard Nott’s voice in her head, jumping to her feet, Molly jolting next to her and tipping away from her to land on one elbow.

 

_ Beau, I need you to switch with me. Follow my footprints, please. _

 

Beau caught her breath, hand on her chest as she tried to calm her heart down, pacing for a moment.

 

“Fucking bullshit magic bullshit… Nott needs me,” she said, leaning down to pick up her staff and looking at Molly, making sure she hadn’t startled him back to death. “You gonna be okay here for a minute?”

 

Molly didn't say anything.

 

“Molly?” She prompted. Fuck, it would be just like her to scare him into catatonia or something, but Molly looked up, turning back towards her.

 

“When did I get a fourth sword?” Molly asked, holding a sword in a sheath as pretty as Summer’s Dance was.  Beau squinted at it. The scabbard was pale, slightly shimmery green, either enamel or some sort of mother-of-pearl, wound with darker green leaves of what looked like ivy. It was much slimmer than Molly’s scimitars or Fjord’s falchion, but still curved (nothing in this party was completely straight, not even the swords, she thought, feeling clever, then remembered Yasha’s giant broadsword and didn’t feel very clever any more). 

 

“I've never seen that before, the fuck did you get that?” she asked.

 

“It was just here, with the others!” Molly said, and attempted to draw it.  The moment his hand wrapped around the hilt, he went still, his eyes looking past it and into some middle distance. Slowly he unfolded his fingers, then held the scabbard out to Beau. 

 

“Can you take this to Caleb?” Molly asked. “I… I'm pretty sure it's his.”

 

“The fuck is Caleb going to do with a  _ sword?”  _ Beau sighed irritably. 

 

Molly just shook his head uneasily, holding it out 

 

“Fucking bullshit magic bullshit, probably. Just… take it to him. Please. I'll be fine here.” 

 

Beau grabbed the sword and trudged off, cursing the entire way.

 

She found Nott quickly enough, and was about to resume cursing when Nott spoke first.

 

“Caleb just tried to leave us,” Nott said, as steady and as matter of fact as when she’d declared that Caleb was her son. “I stopped him, but I can’t drag him back, so I need you to go get him so he doesn’t do something very stupid.”

 

Beau opened her mouth and closed it again.

 

“Okay,” she said. “Molly’s pretty… he’s kinda fucked up about this, could you…?”

 

Nott nodded, not once looking at or asking about the pearly scabbard in Beau’s hand. 

 

Beau took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Caleb was kneeling on the ground, and as she approached, Beau saw the arrows pinning him there.

 

“Caleb, what the fuck, man?” she half-sighed, half-shouted at Caleb’s back. He shrugged as best he could when tethered to the ground. She walked around to sit in front of him.

 

“You tried to  _ leave? _ ” she asked. Caleb raised one hand to his face and nodded.  “You  _ literally just agreed _ to tell me if you weren’t okay, dude! Why?!”

 

Caleb opened his mouth, closed it again, and then spoke softly.

 

“Because Molly thinks that he owes me something for what I did. If he knew what you and Nott know about me, he would not think that. I am going… my stupidity is going to get all of us killed, Beauregard. I do not know what I am doing anymore. Nott can keep you safe, but I should go, before--”

 

“Hey Caleb?” Beau interrupted, not angry, but intensely. “Shut the fuck up, okay?” 

 

Caleb blinked, but did, indeed, shut the fuck up.

 

“I need you to like… actually process the shit I’m about to say rather than going off in your head and nodding and lying to me, again, about telling me if you’re not okay. Do you get that?” 

 

“I do not know if you are going to punch me if I nod or not,” Caleb whispered.  Beau huffed a humorless laugh, the breath curling in the air as the sun continued to rise. 

 

“Caleb, I need you to fuckin’ understand that I care about you. I care about what happens to you. I care if I see you again. I care if you’re around. I care if you’re fuckin’ happy. I would be really, really upset and sad if you left, and I would probably go try to find you.  _ You, _ Caleb. Not your powers, not any of that shit. You, as a person. I cannot be any more fuckin’ clear. You are important to me, and you cannot drive me away. That’s not a fuckin’ challenge, or a promise, it’s just how it is. You can’t change it. I would not be better off without you. None of us would. So you can hate yourself as much as you want, but you cannot make me hate you.”

 

Caleb blinked, then recoiled in that confused way that he did.

 

“I know for a fact that that is untrue, Beauregard,” he said. “There are magics which can  _ make _ you hate me.”

 

“Because of your parents?” Beau asked. Caleb, just ever so imperceptibly, nodded. “Well, Caleb, then that wouldn’t fuckin’ be me, would it? Because that wasn’t you, either.”

 

Caleb shuddered and shut his eyes. Beau stood up.

 

“So, as much of a dick as I feel like for doing this, I feel like we can’t really trust you right now not to hurt yourself,” Beau said, and struck him in his spine, quickly, in a few different spots. His muscles went slack, and she leaned down, yanking the arrows out of the ground and freeing his coat, pocketing all three bolts. He slumped forward, and she picked him up, throwing him over her shoulder.

 

“Fuck’s sake, you need to eat more, Caleb,” she muttered, heading back to the camp. 

  
  
  


Nott scurried back towards the camp upon leaving Beau with Caleb. The sun was coming up, but she was cold and missed the fire, and she was scared half to death and she missed her friends, even though she was walking away from more than she was walking towards. 

 

Despite her best efforts, Nott couldn’t avoid locking eyes with Molly. 

 

“What did he do?” Molly asked sadly, and Nott couldn’t keep the tears from rolling down her cheeks.

 

“He tried to leave,” she said. “Us. Me. He tried to leave. He was just going to go off into the woods by himself and that’s so dangerous, and…”

 

Molly raised one arm and beckoned her under his blanket.

 

“C’mere,” he said, and she waited for half a moment before darting in. The blanket was warm and dark around her, and Molly smelled like sandalwood and vanilla and honeysuckle and the grave, but the grave was fading, slowly. “This is bigger than just the me-thing, isn’t it?”

 

Nott nodded against him.

 

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, voice muffled. 

 

“It’s not your fault. This has been the worst bloody night,” he said, squeezing Nott to his side. 

 

“No,” she said. “That was the night you died.”

 

Molly rubbed her back.

 

“Second worst,” he amended.

 

“Second worst,” she agreed. 

 

“How’d you get him to stay?” Molly asked after a moment, because curiosity killed the cat, and satisfaction brought it back, and satisfaction only lasted for so long. 

 

“I shot three bolts into his coat to pin him to the ground,” Nott said. Molly got very, very still, and then his sides started to shake.

 

“That  _ is  _ clever,” he said, “and very funny.”

 

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m sure in a few days we’ll all have a laugh about it.”

 

“Well, bad news is, Beau isn’t laughing,” Molly said as Beau approached, “Good news is, she’s got Caleb.” 

 

“That’s good,” Nott agreed, poking her head out of the blanket to watch as Beau dumped Caleb on the ground by the fire.

 

“Okay,” Beau said. “Until further notice, me and Nott are in charge, okay? No more running off, no more dying, no more getting kidnapped. Deal?” 

 

She didn't wait for a reply. 

 

“Everyone fucking power nap til the sun is all the way up, and when you wake up, be prepared to move past our dramatic bullshit to go save our fucking friends, because we are a fucking family and I will beat the next person who tries to fuck it up into a paste, even if it's myself.”

 

She tossed the sword onto Caleb's paralyzed body.

 

“Oh, Molly said to give you this,” she said, laid down on bedroll, and angrily went to sleep.

 

“I'd better…” Nott sighed, emerging from under Molly's arm and grabbing the blankets from Caleb's bedroll to tuck around him.

 

“Yeah,” Molly agreed, and laid down as well.

 

Nott sighed as Caleb's eyes followed her, and tucked in beside him.

 

“Get some sleep. It'll be better in the morning.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's got two thumbs and was totally planning on having a regular update schedule before episode 30 fucked them up emotionally and then went on to work a 50 hour work week? This loser, right here. Aiming for Mondays from here on out, but given the givens of a rough work schedule coming up on me, I'm afraid I'm not sure how well I'll hold to it. To everyone who's read or kudo'd or commented, thank you so much. It means the world to me, and I'm gonna go back through and reply to all of them as soon as I can catch up with my life a bit.


	4. Formality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrons come at night, one new friend comes to, and another comes out of hiding. (I have come to realize that these four chapters cover a whopping... Twelve hours of actual time? I swear they're going to get moving soon.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have added the slow burn tag to this. I have no idea how to tag for Artagan, because I'm not sure how to tag for interactions with such an enormous power imbalance. I'm open to suggestions?
> 
> Also, my internet is down so I'm posting from my phone, so I promise to clean up any dodgy formatting soon.

Caleb went to sleep because really, what else could be done when all his companions were doing so, and he was temporarily paralyzed? He considered that he should be more panicked, given that it was at this time of day that Mollymauk had died, had been murdered before their eyes. He considered it, but Nott's claws were gently scratching his scalp, and he did not seem to have any more panic left in him. It was easy to leave his eyes shut, and as sleep took over, Caleb dreamed of warmth. The fingers in his hair grew far softer, the softly hummed tune far sweeter. Caleb's eyes drifted open to a summer sky, to green eyes, and to Artagan beaming down at Caleb, whose head Artagan had pillowed in his lap.

 

"Well!" Artagan declared in the delighted scold of a gossipy aunt. "That was a bit of a lot, wasn't it?'' 

 

Caleb sighed, but made no effort to move. He was fairly certain that this was not a dream, but that he was back in the Feywild in some capacity. His memory was perfect, but he did not think that his mind could recreate the way the fragrances of the flowers changed with the direction of the wind. He did not really think that he could imagine colors so vivid, and even if he could, Caleb was not terribly kind to himself in dreams. He generally didn’t let himself have soft hands, warm laps, and definitely, certainly not gentle masters.

 

"So you were watching, then?" Caleb asked Artagan. 

 

"Of course I was!" Artagan shrugged. "You are a very precious investment, my little witch."

 

Caleb swallowed, because of course. An investment. 

 

"Perhaps you are, er... already having some buyer's remorse?" he asked cautiously. 

 

Admittedly, it was still technically the same day as they had made their bargain together, depending upon where one drew the line in time, so it wasn’t as though Caleb could really be considered to be behind on his as-yet unassigned tasks, let alone the overarching spirit of his mission for the Archeart and for Artagan. 

 

Still, Caleb couldn’t help but brace himself a bit for the inevitable moment when Artagan really caught the scope of what Caleb was and was not. 

 

"Oh, far from it!” Artagan replied, all serene joy.  “Your tiny lives do generate such mythic displays of feeling; it's better than the theater!” 

 

His fingers moved to stroke Caleb's face, the back of his knuckles like peau de soie as he trailed them lightly over Caleb's cheek, tilting his head slightly.

 

“But I could ask you the same: Are you regretting  _ your _ purchase, darling boy?” Artagan asked, with the confidence of one who knew that the answer couldn’t possibly be yes.

 

Caleb shook his head, keeping the movement slight so as not to dislodge Artagan’s hands, comfortable in a way that he rarely was with being touched. Perhaps it was being in the Feywild, or perhaps it was the simple fact that this person had some stake in Caleb's soul. Perhaps it was simply that Caleb knew that he could never hurt Artagan, even if he wished to, that made the contact easier to accept.

 

He had missed it, being touched gently, without any utilitarian purpose. Nott was wonderful, but it was nice to have contact with someone who did not look up to him, a different sort of dynamic which Caleb did not think it wise to try to unpack. 

 

“You told me you would grieve forever if I kept you and you couldn't see your friends again, and yet you tried to leave them behind,” Artagan said curiously, still exploring Caleb's face, now ghosting over the thin skin below his eyes. “Why? You were so sad at the thought, but then you tried to do it to yourself almost immediately.”

 

Caleb shifted his eyes to the side. He had said that, had said exactly that, and done exactly that. 

 

“I am not good for them,” Caleb said softly, only catching the barest edge of Artagan’s eye-roll.

 

“You brought one of them back to  _ life _ , dear boy, and relieved the others of a terrible grief,” Artagan gently argued. “And you did not frame it to me the way that you did to them. Were you lying to me, when you said that you did it to make the world better with the presence of your friend? Or were you lying to them, when you told them your motivation was your own power?”

 

Caleb was silent. The breeze stilled, and knowing the Feywild, it was entirely possible that it did so as a reflection of Artagan’s anticipation. 

“It cannot be both,” Artagan prompted. “Why did you make the choice you did? For power, or for love?”

 

Caleb bit down on both of his lips, hard. He didn’t have any words to hold back, not really, but it still felt as though if he didn’t trap them all, the next sound out of him would be a step towards utter ruin.

 

“I will know the truth,” Artagan said, still kind, but firmer. “Neither truth will make me angry, but either will if it is a lie.”

 

Caleb took a very deep breath and shut his eyes.

 

“I do not know if love is the right word,” Caleb evaded. 

 

“Do you remember how you described him in your prayers? Does that speak to mere fondness, the sort of regard one would have for an acquaintance one finds only better than tolerable?”

 

Caleb shrugged.

 

“The word itself makes you afraid,” Artagan observed, tapping Caleb on the forehead, startling Caleb’s eyes back open. “Tell me the truth of the why of that, then, and we will get to the others later.”

 

Caleb heard his own voice before he realized he was speaking. 

 

“I once loved my parents, then a boy, then a girl, then a teacher,” he said. The words came harder once he was aware he was speaking, somewhere between feeling them pulled out of him and forcing himself to push them past his teeth. “The love for the teacher poisoned and… and  _ warped  _ my love for the boy and the girl. My love for my parents is the reason that they were chosen for me to murder. Not one good thing has ever come from anything I called love. To be loved by me is to be marked for ruin.”

 

Caleb spilled all this and then sucked in a deep gasp of air. It was as though he had been under water, and the words were stones pressed to his chest. Once they were lifted off him, Caleb could rise, and breathe.

 

He sat bolt upright, pulling himself from Artagan’s hands without resistance, and turned to face him. 

 

“How?” Caleb whispered in terror. “I have never articulated these thoughts like this, not to anyone, not even in my own head,  _ how?  _ How are you making me tell you this?”

 

“Shh,” Artagan said, the breeze gently picking up around them. He held his hands out, palms up, and just waited. Caleb hesitated, but raised one hand and placed it in Artagan’s. The Archfey smiled and placed the other on top, holding Caleb’s hand gently.

 

“It is part of the nature of our bargain,” Artagan softly explained. “It is less a bargain between a mortal of the material plane and an ‘otherworldly entity,’ as your scholars like to put it, and more an agreement between a soul and a more powerful being, through the agent of that soul’s mortal mind. That is what makes these bargains so terribly dangerous. Souls are ill-suited to the brokering of contracts, and the mind can get a soul into a dreadful mess, which is why your tales are so cautionary about such things.”

Artagan squeezed Caleb’s hand, then smoothed Caleb’s hair away from his brow.

 

“The nature of our bargain, however, is a little more the reverse. Because of our pact, your soul is at the forefront, rather than your mind, when you are with me. It’s why you allow yourself the affection you reject in the waking world. You answer my questions from your soul’s perspective, clearing the prevarication of your mind.”

 

Caleb’s eyes dropped to his lap.

 

“That is quite terrifying,” he whispered. Artagan released his hand and moved, ducking and snuggling his own head with its seemingly endless wild red curls into Caleb’s lap and looking up at him.

 

“I imagine that it is,” Artagan agreed, squirming in a feline fashion to make himself more comfortable, and before Caleb knew it, he had his hands in Artagan’s hair, stroking his scalp and caressing his face just as Artagan had been doing to him. “Particularly to one who has lived as an ascetic for as long as you have. I imagine it is a terrible vulnerability for someone to  _ know _ what you want and need when you’ve shut yourself away from that knowledge for so long.”

 

Caleb nodded.

 

“It would be a lie to say that you need never fear me,” Artagan said gently, “For I do intend to destroy your life. I will do it for the sake of your soul, my little witch, and because to do it is fascinating to me. It will not be without pain, and much of what I will put you through will be agony, though not in the ways to which you are accustomed. You will curse my ruthlessness and rail against me, you will ask what gives me the right.”

 

Artagan seized Caleb’s wrist and kissed his palm.

 

“Remember, when you ask this, that it was you. You gave me the right,” Artagan purred against his skin. Caleb shivered, and then the fear gave way to surrender. 

 

“That I did,” Caleb agreed. “There is no denying that.”

 

Artagan smiled and kissed Caleb’s palm again, then the inside of his wrist. 

“See? It is not so hard to be honest with me, is it?” he asked. “Now. Kindly give me what is my due, and tell me the truth: Did you come to bargain with me out of a desire for power, or out of love?”

 

Caleb shut his eyes.

 

“Love,” he said. Tears seeped past his tightly shut lids. “Only love.”

 

The weight left his lap and Caleb felt himself folded up into arms as warm as summer, pulled and turned until Artagan was wrapped all around him, and Caleb broke.  

 

At home, in the Blumenthal winter, even the river froze over. He had loved to press his ear to the solid surface, listening to the water rushing beneath, as fast and as alive as in summer, as long as he could stand it, ‘til the shell of his ear burned with the cold and he had to rise. The people of Blumenthal knew that winter was past when that ice cracked, a thousand tiny rivers breaking the surface of the ice before merging together as one, the river entire, again. 

 

Some part of Caleb knew as he sobbed, as Artagan kissed the tears from Caleb’s face, then sweeping them from his own lips with an insatiable tongue, that this was Caleb’s own sign of spring to come, that these cracks would merge together before long.

 

“Mourn your crueler self, Caleb Widogast,” Artagan said between kisses. “Weep for him, weep hard and long, because I will see him buried, and so will you.”

  
  


Caleb woke to cold air, a fully risen sun, warm hands, and  _ screaming _ . He opened his eyes and sat bolt upright, hands igniting.

 

“Keg! What the fuck!” Beau was shouting. Keg was screaming, hammer raised over a supine Mollymauk not two inches to Caleb's left. Nott had her crossbow on Keg, and Beau launched herself to tackle the dwarf to the ground.

 

Caleb let his hands go out. He'd sort of forgotten about Keg. She'd gotten so drunk from Nott's flask that she'd passed out until, evidently, just now, missing most of the day after Molly's death and all of the night of his resurrection.

 

“Fucking zombie trying to eat fucking Caleb!” Keg shouted by way of explanation. Caleb blinked, and Molly righted himself.

 

“You were trying to eat Caleb?” Nott exclaimed, shifting her crossbow to point at Molly instead, lowering it when Caleb leveled a sharp glance at her.

 

“Molly isn't a fucking zombie, Keg, Caleb brought him back!” Beau snapped, smacking her upside the head while grappling her.

 

“Then why was Molly- fucking  _ ow! _ -trying to eat him?!” Keg yelped, now struggling just to struggle. “And what the fuck, Caleb, it would've been fucking nice to know you could do that!”

 

“Sorry,” Molly said, looking sheepishly sideways at Caleb while keeping an eye on Keg. “Sorry… it was almost time to get up, and I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep, and I was wondering if you looked and different after you made your deal, and so I might've come over to look at you while you were sleeping and you were crying and I was worried, and I was about to wake you up but then…”

 

Molly flailed over at Keg instead of finishing that sentence.

 

Caleb touched his own face, which was quite drenched, and wiped it with his scarf. 

 

“I was only dreaming, thank you, Mollymauk. I'm sorry to have frightened you,” Caleb said quietly. Now that his nerves were calming, after all the screaming and the threats had subsided, he thought back to the discussion that he and Artagan had had.

 

Caleb looked at Molly again, and tried to think of power, and found that he couldn't. 

 

Beau sighed and let Keg up. Caleb thought they both looked a little disappointed.

 

“Okay. We can explain the ‘Molly's back’ thing when we're traveling,” Beau said, standing and moving to start packing up her bedroll. “We still need a plan to get Yasha, Fjord, and Jester back.”

 

“Unless you want to cut your losses,” Keg muttered, picking at the pendant wrapped around the handle of her hammer.

 

“I said we need a plan to get Yasha, Fjord, and Jester back,” Beau snapped, yanking the straps around her bedroll so tight that a couple threads popped audibly. “If you wanna bail, there’s the complete lack of door. Pick a direction and start walking.”

 

“I’m just saying,” Keg said, “you already lost another friend. Just because you got him back doesn’t change that.”

 

“The  _ fuck _ it doesn’t!” Beau snarled. “You wanna know how we got Molly back? Caleb sold his soul to some shady-as-fuck Archfey.  _ That’s _ how fuckin’ committed we are to each other, get it? And Nott and I would’ve gone thirdsies or whatever the fuck if we’d known it was happening. We are gonna do whatever it fuckin’ takes, Keg, so get on board or get off now.”

 

Keg blinked, then looked at Caleb.

 

“That true?” she asked.

 

“Jah,” he said, looking off into the treeline. “I need to piss… excuse me.”

 

Caleb got up and stalked towards the woods, just needing a damned moment away from awed and pitying looks, a moment to process his own middle of the night revelations without eyes upon him.  

 

“Nott, follow him,” Beau ordered.  “No one goes anywhere alone from now on, unless they’re going for good,  _ which Caleb’s not allowed to do. _ ”

 

“Fine,” Caleb called back over his shoulder.  Nott would keep him in view without being too close. 

 

“I’ll go,” he heard Molly say, much to Caleb’s silent dismay. “Nott’s a lady, after all, and deserves the respect a lady is due,and I’m going to have to get my legs back under me sooner or later.”

 

Caleb kept walking, but didn’t speed up. He slowed a bit instead, not enough so that Molly caught up, but enough that he could hear Molly behind him, in case… well. In case.  

 

He found some shrubs over by the horses that looked non-threatening, and then did a double take.

 

There was an extra horse. An extra, incredibly healthy, beautiful horse. Which was staring at him.

 

Caleb turned and peered at it, glancing around to see if there was a rider. It had no saddle, bridle, or bags. Glancing down, he saw no imprints of shoes behind it, just hooves. He edged closer, and the horse mirrored him.

 

“When did we get another horse?” Molly hissed, having caught up when Caleb wasn’t paying attention.

 

“We did not,” Caleb said softly. “Not too close, please…”

 

Before he even finished the sentence, the horse was shifting, not really  _ twisting,  _ but definitely moving and bending in ways that horses shouldn’t. A seven foot tall firbolg woman with kind, astonished eyes and soft, floppy ears stood before them, looking between Molly and Caleb.

 

“Heyyyy…” Caleb said awkwardly, glancing sidelong at Molly, who was glancing sidelong back. Molly didn’t have his swords, and while Caleb had his books, the woods were a hazardous place to use his skill set.

 

“You came  _ back, _ ” she whispered, looking Molly up and down, then at Caleb, as though to ask if he was seeing Molly as well.  

 

“Yes!” Molly exclaimed. “I’m pretty pleased about it myself. Got this one to thank for it, actually. I don’t believe we’ve met, but I’ve got an utterly terrible memory for faces, I’m afraid.”

 

“Oh no, we have not met before!” the woman explained. “I am called Nila. I have been watching you, and your friends! When I saw you… Well, I grieved for your friends’ grief, but you have returned, which is truly amazing!”

 

“Well, now we have met! Mollymauk Tealeaf!” Molly replied, offering his hand to her, clapping both around her giant hand and giving it a squeeze, much the way Artagan had held Caleb’s. “Molly to my friends. And we are friends now, aren’t we?”

 

“I would  _ love  _ to be your friend,” she replied, soft and conspiratorial, like a child sharing a joyous secret, and then turned to Caleb. Her face fell slightly. “Oh no, are you all right?”

 

Molly looked at him as well, and his grip on Nila’s hands went slack. 

 

“Caleb, why don’t you message Nott and tell her that we’re sending a new friend their way, and we’ll meet Nila back at the camp and continue this?” Molly said, then turned his smile on Nila and winked. “We wandered this way to take care of a little private business, we’ll be right behind you.”

 

“Oh, of course!” Nila said, and Caleb fumbled for his wire. “I did not mean to intrude.”

 

“Nott, we have met a very nice firbolg in the woods, and we are sending her to speak with you and Beauregard because you are in charge. You can reply to this message.”

 

“Does she know Pumat Soul?” Nott’s voice returned in Caleb's head. “You can reply to this message.”

 

“I did not get a chance to ask, we will be along in just a moment, please do not shoot her,” Caleb replied, and put his wire away. Molly watched Nila go, directing her towards the camp, and then turned back to Caleb, eyes wide with worry.

 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Caleb asked him. Molly stepped forward and swiped his thumb across Caleb’s cheek and tasted it.

 

“You’re either crying, or you’re puking up seawater from your eyeballs, and I’m pretty sure that’s Fjord’s thing,” Molly said. “Or are you just dreaming again?”

 

Caleb blinked, shaking his head to try to clear it. Otherworldly beauties tasting his tears seemed to be becoming a trend.

 

“I do not know what you are asking me,” Caleb said, rubbing his face in the crook of his elbow. “Perhaps I am allergic to something that grows here. Or are allergies exclusively Fjord’s as well?”

 

Molly sighed, pacing in a small circle with his hands on his hips, kicking at the underbrush.

 

“I really don’t remember you being this frustrating when I was alive last,” he said. 

 

“We had only one conversation that was just the two of us,” Caleb pointed out. “It took place in a sewer and it was all of ten seconds long.”

 

Molly rocked back on his heels, looking up among the branches. Caleb didn't think he'd find any answers up there.

 

“That’s… that’s true,” Molly sighed. “And I think a big part of why that was true was that you made it very clear that you wanted your privacy, and I gave it to you because it wasn’t a problem, and… and as Beau pointed out, because maybe I didn’t care as much as I should have, because I thought it wasn’t my business.”

 

Caleb’s heart sank a little. It was something that he had suspected, that Molly was not interested in pasts in general, but particularly disinterested in ones he suspected were ugly. Few were as ugly as Caleb’s. Molly's instincts were certainly right on that mark. 

 

“There is no reason for that to have changed now, Mollymauk,” Caleb replied, folding his hands behind his back formally. Artagan had said that Caleb would experience new agonies;perhaps this is what he meant. Caleb kept his tone polite, and continued.

 

“I know that you think that you are obligated to me in some way. I can only tell you that you are not. If that does not sit well with you, then use that feeling to look after the others, and to look after yourself, and perhaps this need not happen again, ja?”

 

Caleb turned to conduct his actual business in the woods, and to compose himself a bit. He just needed a moment to recenter, to compartmentalize having his defenses dismantled by his newfound patron, to pin down what had made his tears rise back to the surface so abruptly just them and find a way to box it off so that he would not have to explain it to the others.

 

Apparently he was not to get it. Molly grabbed his sleeve.

 

“Wait,” Molly said. Caleb stopped. It was impolite to walk away from someone who was speaking to you, and rudeness was reserved for foes and friends. “What about you?”

 

Caleb just shrugged.

 

“What about me?” he asked. 

 

“Why am I supposed to look out for everyone except you?” Molly asked. Caleb could feel Molly's hand shaking where it held his sleeve. “Why did you start crying just now?”

 

Molly sighed, stepping closer. Caleb felt Molly rest his forehead against Caleb's shoulder. It was difficult to think of the polite response to that.

 

“Why everyone but you, Caleb?” Molly asked, breath fanning warm on his back.

 

“I cannot tell you why I started crying, Mollymauk, because I did not even know that I was until you pointed it out to me. I might as well be,” Caleb paused, chuckling, “puking up seawater from my eyeballs.”

 

“Bullshit,” Molly said sadly, without too much venom. 

 

Caleb took a deep, trembling breath. No Academy etiquette lesson had accounted for Mollymauk, so Caleb fell back on Mollymauk himself.

 

“‘Never trust the truth. The truth is vicious, the truth thinks that you owe it something… None of that. I like my bullshit,’” Caleb quoted back to him, and started to pull away. Molly wrapped an arm around Caleb's waist, pressing his other hand to Caleb's chest.

 

“I may not have your memory, Caleb, but I distinctly remember saying that my bullshit was good because it was happy. Your bullshit seems to be breaking your heart, Caleb,” Molly said.

 

After a brief pause, he added, softer and sadder:

 

“And I think it might be breaking mine as well.”

 

Molly's hand, purely by accident, strayed to the Periapt under Caleb's shirt, and Caleb caught it there, holding Molly's hand to his chest, sightly afraid that if he let go, Molly would reach right past the heart shaped charm to poke at Caleb's fragile human one instead.

 

“Then we are both a bit hypocritical, ja?” Caleb said, patting Molly's hand. Caleb pulled away, Molly allowing it this time, and reached behind his neck, undoing the chain from which the Periapt hung.

 

“I took this from you when it seemed you might not need it any longer, but now you are back,” Caleb said, holding the lovely little heart out. Molly stared at it, then looked at Caleb.

 

“You should keep it,” Molly said. “The least I can do, really…”

 

He trailed off, Caleb shaking his head.

 

“It is yours, Mollymauk. Please take it back,” Caleb replied, sighing as Molly's jaw took a stubborn set. 

 

“Please. You're far weaker than I am,” Molly said, making a very odd face. Caleb squinted as Molly tried to sneer at him, then wrinkled his nose and switched which side of his lip he was trying to curl. “A stiff breeze could put you down; you need it far more than I do.”

 

Caleb couldn’t help himself, he smiled softly, chuckling, which seemed to startle Molly.

 

“That is very true,” Caleb agreed, “the first bit, anyway. But you will not change my mind by trying to make me angry, Mollymauk.”

 

The feigned contempt fell off Molly's face instantly when he realized that ploy had failed, and he stepped back into Caleb's space.

 

“You  _ need _ it!” Molly insisted, grabbing Caleb’s wrist. “Caleb, you need this.”

 

“I do not,” Caleb replied firmly, pulling his wrist free and raising his other hand as well, getting hold of the two sides of the chain. “I do need for you to keep it, and for you to keep yourself safe. I do not need for you to worry about me.”

 

Molly froze, seemingly uncertain about what to do with his hands, as Caleb reached over his shoulders.  Caleb fumbled with the clasp, bringing their faces quite close as he tried to see what he was doing. Finally, Caleb fastened the Periapt back around Molly's neck.

 

“I… er… I remember how you had it arranged, but I do not know how to make it do that, so I think we will have to wait until we find a mirror,” Caleb said, letting go and drawing back, putting his hands in his coat pockets. 

 

Molly shrugged, looking lost and a little forlorn as he fiddled with the Periapt. 

 

“Beauregard has your cards, but no one took anything else,” Caleb said. 

 

Molly shrugged.

 

“Wasn't worried about it,” he said. “I was dead.”

 

“And now you are not. I will be right back,” Caleb replied, and went just far enough into the bushes to do his business with a modicum of privacy.  Molly was right where Caleb had left him when he returned, still staring at the Periapt and looking deep in thought.

 

“We should check on the others,” Caleb said. “We will need to make a plan, and there is now a new person among us; we should probably attend to that.”

 

“Sure,” Molly said absently. “One last thing, though.”

 

Caleb sighed deeply and waited.

 

“Let me do a reading for you.”

 

Caleb’s repetition that Molly owed him nothing died in his mouth and he tilted his head. Molly took his hesitation as a chance to plow forward with his line of reasoning.

 

“I will keep the necklace and not slip it back around your neck at every opportunity, or have Nott do it for me, if you let me do a reading for you. I don’t even have to tell you what it means, I can just flip cards and keep it to myself. Please.”

 

Caleb sighed.

 

“If it will make you happy,” he agreed.

 

> “I sincerely hope that it will,” Molly answered, and they ushered each other awkwardly back to camp. 


	5. Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The journey continues, with a different visitation. (Posting from my phone, will fix wonky formatting later.)

Molly hadn’t really felt a whole lot of guilt before, having had very little time to do things to feel bad about and very little inclination to do them. 

 

Experiencing it now, he was finding he didn’t care for it. 

 

He thought back on the conversations he’d had with Caleb, just the two of them: The one in the sewer. A moment or two at Harvest Close, not really a conversation. That brief moment a few weeks before in Hupperdook, when Caleb called him cute. Another later, in the prison, where Caleb was damned hurt, and they were both relieved to be alive, and Caleb had called him magical and patted his cheek. 

 

They were only days from that. Mere days ago, Caleb’s jagged edges had seemed to start to soften. He’d gotten absolutely wrecked with them. He’d danced with Jester. He’d called Molly cute, and magical. They had nicknames for one another, simplistic as they might be, ‘Mister Mollymauk’ and ‘Mister Caleb.’  Finally, they were getting to something that wasn’t so bloody formal and starched and cold on one side, jibing and teasing but always shallow on the other.

 

There was nothing casual about the Caleb who walked back to camp a bit ahead of Molly now, spine straight and hands folded behind his back. He reminded Molly of the few true military men who’d come by the circus, not the local crownsguard, but the ones who actually ran the proper wars. The ones who got to send people to their deaths rather than just walking there themselves.  

 

Even in the conversation that they had just had, the more casual Molly became, the more polite and formal Caleb became in response. Hell, Caleb hadn’t called him ‘Mister Mollymauk’ once since he’d been back, wouldn’t even call him Molly. They were back to the start: A divided group, full of mistrust, Caleb looking to cut and run, except now Molly really, really didn’t want him to. 

 

Beau and Nott had seemingly done a pretty solid evaluation of Nila’s skillset and intentions and found her to be worthy help.

 

"She’s cool,” Beau said shortly when Caleb and Molly were back in earshot.  “First step is get into Shady Creek Run. We’re gonna do some asking around and see if we can find some mercs, maybe see if this job the Gentleman has us on will tie in to the rest of it and give us some info, maybe some supplies. We figure out what we can, do a little recon, hire some extra help, and then we fuckin’  _ move. _ ”

 

Caleb nodded. Given the rock solid assurance of Beau’s tone, Molly couldn’t imagine Caleb doing anything else.

 

“You are a good leader, Beauregard,” Caleb said softly. Beau looked down, adjusting her hand wraps self-consciously, but Molly caught the moment of shock on her face before she did. 

 

“Not yet,” she said, squaring her jaw and meeting Caleb’s eyes again. “Tell me that shit again when we’ve got our friends back.”

 

Molly could respect that, and gave her a grim smile as she went to go see to the last of their preparations. It looked like Nott and Beau had already packed up for Caleb and himself, so Molly was left at loose ends while Beau and Keg prepared the horses and Caleb retreated away from him to the safety of Nott. Eventually Molly wandered over to the tall firbolg woman, Nila, mostly for the sake of not being alone.

 

“I take it you met the ladies?” Molly asked, Nila’s height and breadth making a nice break from the chill wind. She smiled.

 

“Yes. They are very nice, and very strange,” she said, a little hesitant, “but I think we will be able to do good together. We will get your friends back, and my partner, and my son.”

 

Oh, fuck. 

 

“Oh, you poor woman,” Molly covered his mouth with one hand. He and the others had been been focused on their friends, but Weaver only knew how many lives these bastards had destroyed. If this band of slavers could take down people as capable as Fjord, Jester, and fuck,  _ Yasha…  _ But Molly knew that Nila didn’t need his horror, or his pity. Like so many before her, Nila needed Molly’s bravado, so he pushed back his shoulders and put on his most crooked grin, flashing the point of a single canine.

 

“You’re absolutely right,” he said, firm and easy. “We’ll get them all back, and when we do, I’ll teach your son to juggle, if you’re alright with that.”

 

Nila nodded, meeting his gaze and nodded.

 

“I think that he would- he  _ will _ like that very much.”

 

“What are their names?” Molly asked, because names were important, and particularly with people being held captive, knowing a name could be the difference between being trusted and free or the both of you being dead. 

 

“My son is Asar,” she said. “My partner is Kitor. And your missing friends are Jester, Yasha, and Fjord. The others here are Nott, Keg, and Beau.  But what is that man’s name?”

 

She pointed to Caleb, who was sitting on a pack examining the strange new sword with Nott, fingers lightly exploring the decorations and the blade. 

 

“Caleb,” Molly answered, quietly enough not to bring either Caleb or Nott’s attention over to them. “Caleb Widogast.”

 

Nila hesitated before asking her next question, probably thinking she had intruded on a romantic spat in the woods earlier, or the end of a relationship, some sort of heartbreak, surely.

 

“And is he… all right?” she asked, the picture of tact. If they’d been meeting Beau or Jester for the first time, either would’ve flat out asked what shitty thing Molly had done to make his lover cry, and Molly would’ve had the same answer that he had for Nila now.

 

“I don’t know. I don't know much of anything anymore, and I didn't know that much to begin with,” Molly said, fiddling with the Periapt and wishing to the Moonweaver that he was a wiser man.

 

Nila nodded.

 

“I feel like that very often,” she said, touching a little bag that hung from her robes. “When I was with my tribe, it was not so bad to feel that way, but by myself, it is so much harder.” 

 

Molly nodded. After a moment, for want of anything else to do, the two of them both started heading towards the horses. 

 

“Our friends who were taken are… well, one of them has basically been our leader this whole time. Only been a month, I guess,” Molly said to fill the silence, and to reciprocate the openness, and because he missed his friends and didn’t know what the rest of them would do if they couldn’t get Fjord, Jester, and Yasha back. “One is the joy of the group, makes sure we don't take anything too seriously. And the third… she's my best friend, I've known her almost my entire life. I don't really know where I am without them.  I used to be in a travelling carnival with Yasha, you know. That’s how I met most of these people, except for Keg. Groups like this… there’s almost always a lynchpin who holds everything together, and I’m not completely sure who it was, but it definitely wasn’t any of the four of us.”

 

Molly looked up at Nila, and guilt hit him again. What a wretched fucking emotion that he was very, very sick of already.  

 

“Sorry,” he added. “It’s not that the rest of us aren’t capable people, it’s just…. Fuck. I meant to be reassuring and now I’ve basically told you that you’ve wound up with the people from the children’s table rather than the proper grown ups for help.”

 

Nila just shook her head.

 

“No one thinks that they are the grown up,” Nila answered. “No one in my tribe relies on me. It has never been necessary.  But it is necessary  _ now. _ ”

 

The fierceness in her voice startled Molly a little, but there was something terribly comforting about this fierceness for this reason, coming from a person he could sense was very gentle. She placed a hand on his arm to stop him where he stood.

“I am ready in a way that I was not before.  I think that you are as well. We will get them back,” Nila said firmly, her huge hand squeezing his arm for emphasis. “And no one will suffer at the hands of the Iron Shepherds ever again.”

 

The Iron Shepherds. Molly turned it over in his head a few times. 

 

“Is that what those fuckers who killed me call themselves?” Molly scoffed. “Stupid name.”

 

“Yes,” Nila agreed. Molly looked up at her. It was fucking cold out, and he was still only a few hours out of his grave, and he’d been having a bit of trouble talking to the people he knew well after his return. He couldn’t ask Nott, Beau, or Keg for this. He didn’t want to know what would happen if he asked Caleb. But Nila was here, and so Molly asked her:

 

“I know this is probably out of the blue, but how do you feel about hugs?”

 

Not once, not a single twitch of Nila’s face made Molly regret having asked her as she nodded, voice cracking a bit as she said,

 

“I would like one very much if you are offering.”

 

Molly threw his arms around her, holding tight, and shuddered as she wrapped huge warm arms around him. It wasn't quite as bone crushing as a hug from Yasha or Jester, but it was close enough.

 

“We will be all right,” Nila said into his hair, curling her body down over his in a sheltering hug that made him feel so warm. Maybe even safe. “So will those we love. I am sure of it now.”

 

Safe was a very nice idea.

 

They stood and just comforted each other for a moment, until footsteps came crunching.

 

“Hey guys,” Beau said, just a little regretful, but firm all the same. “Time to get rolling.” 

 

Molly gave Nila one last squeeze.

 

“Nila can tell you how much you're missing out now, Beau,” Molly said, brave-faced but so afraid, so fucking afraid of what all this meant, three friends absent, one gone even more distant than before, a second death under his body's belt already on this trip. “I'll turn you into a cuddler yet.”

 

Beau rolled her shoulders.

 

“Molly, once we get our friends back,” she said, “we can fucking snuggle. If we kill every one of these fuckers, I'll even let you be the big spoon.”

 

Molly barked a laugh, startling himself, and Caleb and Nott looked over at him. Beau, meanwhile, slapped her own face.

 

“Can't even be mad,” Beau said. “I missed your dumbass donkey laugh too much. But could you  _ try  _ not to wake the whole fucking forest?”

 

“Whatever you say, fearless leader!” Molly replied. Beau just sighed and told everyone to bring it in.

 

Over the next several minutes, they debated various aspects of potential plans.

 

“A cart will only slow us down,” Nott insisted, “and we’ll have to lose time doubling back for it, halfway back to Hupperdook, which means going past the fucking Ankhegs again--”

 

“Look, we can’t double up on the horses with Keg, okay?” Beau argued back, tugging at her hair in frustration. “Molly may not be able to ride, and fuck, I don’t know how you even put a seven-foot-tall firbolg  _ on _ a damn horse!”

 

“I do not know how to ride a horse. But I can  _ be _ a horse,” Nila interrupted, eagerly. “Would that help?”

 

Everyone shut up, and stared, breath curling in the silence between them all.

 

“Wait, what?” Beau asked. Caleb shrugged.

 

“She was a horse when we met her,” he said, not meeting anyone’s eye. Beau stared at Caleb hard, trying to figure out if what he said was total bullshit, and Caleb fidgeted more with every moment of scrutiny. Molly finally took pity and spoke up:

 

“Can confirm, this fine woman was an equally fine horse,” he said. “Put the rest of our horses to shame to be honest. Even before the Ankhegs.”

 

There was a clank as Keg sputtered and gestured wildly, plates of armor tinging against itself. 

 

“Way to bury the lede, fuckers,” she exclaimed, then sighed and stilled, picking a cigarette out of her pack and lighting it. “Okay, so that solves the horse situation.”

 

“I’m not sure that it does,” Nott said, eyes narrowed at Molly in suspicion, but her hands wringing in worry.  “Are you  _ sure  _ you can ride, Molly?”  

 

“Well I can’t stay here,” Molly replied, forcing himself to look at the bloodied canvas that he’d nearly been buried in, “so I’d have to ride to get back to the cart. So either way, I’m going to have to. Didn’t you mention some moss I could eat? Or was I having near-death hallucinations?”

 

Caleb gave Beau and Nott both a pinched look of disapproval at his earlier instructions not having been followed. 

 

“Don’t give me that pissy-ass look,” Beau grumbled at Caleb, flipping him off as she produced the healing moss. “We were a little busy figuring shit out, and it’s not like we know how to use this shit. Nila, what the hell do we do with this?” 

 

Nila brightened, reaching out.

 

“I can prepare this!” she said eagerly, Beau more than happy to shove the bundle into Nila’s hands. Nila crushed the bag between the heels of her hands, rubbing back and forth vigorously. When she opened the bag, what remained was a fine powder.  “We need some hot water?” 

 

Caleb rose immediately, taking the metal pot from their mess kit, finding the deepest patch of snow and filling it.  

 

“The fire’s gone cold,” Nott said, getting up as well. “I’ll be back in just a moment, there should still be enough kindling--”

 

Caleb had the little pot cupped in both hands, and shook his head.

 

“I… er… I do not think that that will be necessary, Nott,” he said. Steam had already begun to rise from the pot before Nott could ask why he said so, as Caleb was, apparently, boiling the water with his bare hands.

 

“Could you do that before?” Nott asked him softly, and Molly saw Caleb shrug, turning his eyes to avoid meeting Nott’s and finding Molly’s by accident. Before Molly could try to read whatever was in them, Nila rose to pour the powdered moss into the pot, murmuring quietly over the pot and blocking Caleb from view before stepping aside to ask for a mug.

 

“Does it need to be filtered?” Caleb asked Nila, eyes briefly glancing off of Molly again with an expression that Molly was desperate to try to read. Keg handed Nila a tin cup from her own kit, and Caleb, terribly careful not to scald Nila’s hands by splashing a single drop, poured the pot off into it.

 

“No, it is better if it is not,” Nila said, waiting until Caleb had tapped the last dregs into the cup, which she then handed back to Caleb as she went to find something to stir with. “It is not very pleasant, I am afraid, but it will make you stronger right away.”

 

Caleb nodded dumbly, pot dangling from one hand, the tin cup in the other.  Nott cleared her throat.

 

“Can he put alcohol in it?” Nott asked, holding her flask up to Nila with both hands. “Alcohol makes everything more pleasant.”

 

“Better not,” Caleb said flatly, taking the cup to Molly once Nila had finished stirring and crouching down.  “Don’t burn yourself, please.”

 

Molly was about to remind Caleb that fire didn’t bother Molly much, that he was hard to burn, but Caleb’s eyes dropped away again and he slunk off. Molly downed the sludgy tea and knocked it back in one go. It tasted exactly like moss.

 

“That is  _ awful, _ ” Molly said, shaking his head. Beau ambled over surprisingly quickly, holding out a cup of her own, capping a skin that hung from her robes. 

 

“Chaser,” she said, holding out the cup ‘til Molly took it, “make it last, okay?” 

 

Molly smelled the rich, dark fruit first, and took a deep sip from the cup, and  _ oh,  _ that was better. He was about to ask, but Beau was already gone back to preparations for travel. All kinds of questions he didn’t have time to ask, or that his friends didn’t have time to answer. 

 

“Time for that later,” he murmured to himself, finishing off the wine in careful sips. 

 

A disguised Caleb would ride one horse, leading another with Molly and Beau disguised as baggage, while a disguised Nott would ride Nila as a horse, leading the other horse with Keg as her own bundle. Bribe the guards, head into Shady Creek Run. Keg had advised them of a brothel run by the family of the business contact The Gentleman had sent them to see, who happened to be in direct opposition to the family who supported the Iron Shepherds. 

 

It was a long, cold journey to get that far, all of them curled up in a cave on the winding road while the winds blasted snow towards them. 

 

And Molly dreamed, for the first time in this new life.

 

He saw a door, and he wondered if the one Caleb had seen looked like this. This, however, was in the mouth of the cave that they’d sheltered in, and beyond it, there was just the sheer slope of the mountain, very nearly a cliff.  Molly sat up, and stood, and saw himself sleeping, Nila at his back, Nott in the middle having spread her oversized winter clothing as best she could over all of them, and his tail having curled around Caleb’s wrist. The spade of the tip was nestled in Caleb’s palm, the pad of his thumb unconsciously tracing the edge in his sleep. Molly held his breath and waited, torn between wanting Caleb to wake up and realize what he was doing, and wanting him to stay asleep so that he wouldn’t stop just yet. This sleeping affection reminded him of that delirious-with-injury Caleb who had patted his cheek and called him magic.

How had everything gotten so fucked up so fast, Molly wondered. 

 

Before he could stand and approach the door, it opened. A girl with pale blue skin, deep blue hair, and a dress like fog over the moon stepped through, and Molly knew her at once. 

 

“Weaver,” he whispered hoarsely, “help me.”

 

She was before him in three silent strides, arms thrown around his neck, clutching his head to her stomach as he sobbed.

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to him, kissing his crown between the horns, “oh Molly, oh my dear child, I’m  _ so _ sorry, I should’ve… I couldn’t… I wanted to find a way, but there are limits on what the gods can do without being asked, but your friend asked, thank  _ everything  _ that he asked. It would be so hard to look down upon a world you were gone from so soon.”

 

Molly shuddered, clinging to her skirts, letting his deity stroke his hair and hold him. 

 

“It’s not that,” he whispered. “It was cold, and dark, and I remember shadows and feathers, and I think maybe a man who said he was so proud of me for spitting in that fucker’s face, that wasn’t so bad. It was easier coming back this time, but Caleb sold his soul and I don’t know what that means.”

 

Molly pulled his face away, looking up at her. 

 

“Were you there?” he asked. “Really?” 

 

The Moonweaver nodded, still gently petting, and Molly wondered if that was a motherly expression looked like. He’d seen something similar on Nott’s face when Beau had brought back Caleb, if one could compare the faces of goblins and gods. And why not? Molly would be terribly grateful if the Moonweaver loved him half as much as Nott seemed to love Caleb. 

 

“He acts like he did nothing for me, like his soul was just a bit of gristle left on a plate,” Molly said desperately, “and I honestly don’t know whether I want that to be to be how he truly thought of it or if that would be the worst thing in the Nine Realms.”

 

The Moonweaver sat down before him, so small, but  _ enormous  _ in her presence, and looked over at Caleb.

 

“Your man is a strange one,” she said softly, “asking two gods at once. Most people would know better, but he tried anyway. If he had only asked the Archeart, I don’t know what might have happened. Perhaps Artagan would not have given him back, and you would’ve woken, but you’d’ve lost him. If he had only asked me, I’m not sure that his plea on behalf of my dead follower, no matter how dear, would’ve been enough to breach the rules that separate the gods from mortals.”

 

Molly opened his mouth and shut it again, about to protest that Caleb might be many things, but he was not Molly’s man. 

 

_ I have one wizard. _

 

_ Mister Caleb.  _

 

_ This was not how I expected this to go. Thank you. _

 

“He’s a very clever man,” Molly said softly. “And he did me a great kindness. He thinks he didn't pay enough to deserve any thanks for what he did. I'm not really certain how to fix that.”

 

The Moonweaver tensed in his arms.

 

“I have some influence, some mediation in how Artagan deals with him. Artagan only has any claim on him in this life,” she said. “There are worse bargains, far worse. And far worse to make them with.”

 

Molly swallowed hard, tracing over Caleb’s face in the pale moonlight that reflected off the snow and into the cave.

 

“But?” he prompted.

 

“Artagan is…” the Moonweaver sighed. “He is an Archfey, with power over a creature dominated by reason, who is in terrible pain, and terribly delicate, despite his strength. I can only hope that Artagan’s compassion outweighs his curiosity.”

 

Molly just barely bit back a moan.

 

“Is Artagan that heartless?” 

 

“Oh no, he is almost entirely heart. That's far more dangerous. Everything he feels, he feels deeply and unremorsefully,” the Moonweaver answered. 

 

“That's… that might be the exact opposite of Caleb. I'm fairly sure he thinks everything, and when he does feel, it's  _ only  _ remorse,” Molly said. The Moonweaver gave him a sharp glance.

 

“Do you mean that?” she asked. Molly sighed.

 

“No,” he said.

 

“Good, because the man who begged for your life felt a very great deal.”

 

“Then why would he hide it?” Molly complained, grabbing his own tail to stop the lashing. “Why would he act as though it was entirely practical, business, just a bid for power?”

 

The Moonweaver squeezed Molly's shoulder, and turned him to face her.

 

“Molly,” she said gentle-firm, stern-soft, cradling his face in her night-cool hands.”If he told you tomorrow that he sold a stake in his soul because he couldn't bear to live in a world without you in it, what would happen next?”

 

Molly blinked. He opened his mouth, but his brain hadn't come up with any word yet with which he could answer.

 

“If he looked you in the eye and told you that he had done this, something that heroes in epic poems do, if he laid his poor heart in your hands the way he laid his soul down like a tapestry for you to walk upon out of death, what then? What would you say? Truly, what would you say?” 

 

His mouth and throat were so dry, and he had to swallow once, twice, to wet it enough to speak. He finally found his voice, though he almost wished he hadn’t, because he couldn’t lie to his own goddess.

 

“I don’t know,” Molly said.  “I didn’t think that far ahead.”

 

Molly swallowed a third time, thinking of how he had failed to think of how damn close he was to unconsciousness, how the darkness had already been creeping in on the edges of his vision when he’d activated his blood maledict before Lorenzo and fallen to the ground, causing all this mess. 

 

“I… I suppose I rarely do.”

 

The Moonweaver tugged him further down so that she could kiss his forehead gently, giving him a fond but exasperated smile.

 

“I know, my darling one,” she sighed, tucking a curl behind his ear. “But if you want that one’s trust, you’ll have to try. Ignoring the past and the future suits you. You’re a here-and-now sort of creature. You can remain so, if that’s what you want, but it does not come without a cost.”

 

Molly shivered, even though the cold wasn’t touching him the way it touched his body as he looked down at himself and at Caleb, both of them still sound asleep. They both looked terribly young, but especially Caleb, the inverse heart shape that was the tip of Molly’s tail nestled in his hand.

 

Wasn’t that a little revoltingly, achingingly on the fucking nose.

 

Molly looked out at the cave entrance and part of him wanted to run very, very badly. Part of him resented Caleb for not waiting, for not just taking Molly’s body with and finding a cleric or a druid or  _ whoever _ instead of Caleb taking matters into his own burning hands, for saddling Molly with all this debt and doubt.

 

“Is Caleb in love with me?” Molly asked, because at least, at the very least, that would make some sense. The Moonweaver tensed a bit at the question.

 

“He loves you,” she replied, “that much is obvious. What kind of love, that’s less so. And if I did know, I won’t do him such an unkindness as to tell you, not after the gift he gave to me.”

 

The Moonweaver was kind enough to leave the “and to you” unspoken, but guilt crashed in on Molly anyway, straight to the heart like that horrible fucking glaive had done, but this time, Molly’s words spilled out instead of his blood.

 

“I don’t want to be upset with him, but I  _ am, _ ” Molly blurted. “It’s cruel to bring me back and have everyone around me, including my own deity, tell me it was for  _ love, _ because he cares and then…”

 

Molly’s voice cracked, and he cursed himself, for being a petulant child in front of his own goddess.

 

“...and then stop being my friend.  Bring me back only to push me away, bring me back and try to abandon me, that’s fucking cruel; you  _ can’t  _ tell me that’s isn’t cruel.”

 

He looked at the Moonweaver, desperate to see an expression that validated him, but he saw only sorrow instead.

 

“That’s fear,” she corrected him gently. 

 

“Fear of  _ what?!” _ Molly exclaimed, mindless of all the sleeping figures around them. “I’ve never hurt him! What could possibly be worse than what’s happened already?”

 

The Moonweaver petted his hair, the picture of patience.

 

“Molly, do you love Caleb?”

 

“Sure,” he shrugged instantly. “I love all of them.”

 

The Moonweaver continued petting him in silence, until Molly whispered,

 

“Oh.  I don’t know.  Oh. I... I never really thought about it. I didn’t think it mattered.”

 

The Moonweaver sighed, and sat. She beckoned him down, and with a look alone, seemed to communicate to Molly that he could rest his head in her lap, which was warm in a way that her hands were not. 

 

“You don't demand water when you aren't thirsty, or food when you're not hungry. Molly, my darling one, before you demand things of Caleb, please be sure you need them, or that you want them,” she said, leaning over and around his horns to kiss his temple. “Especially rare things which he only has one of to give?” 

 

Molly nodded in her lap, careful not to gore her leg with his horn.

 

“This is so much harder than I ever expected it to be,” Molly murmured, the Moonweaver's hands slowly lulling his soul back to sleep.

 

“I know,” she apologized, “but I think you will find it worth the trouble.”

 

Molly watched as, by his sleeping body, Caleb's eyes opened, and he didn’t immediately recoil. That was nice. For a few moments, Caleb looked at Molly the way that he had started to before Molly had gone and died. He reached out and carefully brushed a bit of hair that had fallen across Molly's face back behind his horn. 

 

“Me too,” Molly confessed, drifting into sleep inside of sleep.


	6. Restraint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile, Caleb has another dream-visitation, in which new tricks are learned, practice is made very imperfect, and some boundaries are established. In the waking world, an important conversation occurs. 
> 
> Edit to add: There is a scene towards the end that is almost entirely and unrepentantly inspired by / ripped off from the series Green Wing. 
> 
> Content note for this chapter: There is a discussion of consent in this chapter, and while it doesn't revolve around sex, I'm a little concerned that it might be triggering for some people? I may be worrying too much. See the end notes if you're concerned, please.

Caleb was actually starting to look forward to sleep. 

 

Artagan challenged him, picked remorselessly at Caleb’s defenses, with zero regard for how it might affect Caleb when he woke. Maybe that was what made sleep feel safer, because Artagan seemed so unfazed by anything Caleb said or did. In the waking world, Caleb had to worry constantly that something might be uncovered, that he might say or reveal something that would show the others the true Caleb Widogast, which could only lead to disgust, fear, and condemnation. 

 

Artagan already knew, Caleb suspected, all that Caleb was, all that he had done, and saw something within all that useful enough to spend his effort on, useful enough to want to keep.

 

When Caleb went to sleep this last time, he felt safe in a way that he thought he must have imagined feeling when he was a child. How could he not, when he went to sleep frozen to the bone and miserable, and opened his eyes to a summer sun and Artagan’s adoring face smiling down at him. 

 

“Hello, drazjistorya,” Artagan murmured, using that word again, obsession-pet-slave-favorite-adored, his face terribly soft and fond, just before his hand swept from behind his back, arcing in a pale gold sweep. Caleb only just rolled out of the way as the sun-colored blade in Artagan’s hand buried itself in the ground where Caleb’s head had just been.

 

“Fuck!” Caleb exclaimed, scrambling backwards on his ass, heart thrumming wildly. Artagan dragged his sword free. Rather than his usual soft robes, Artagan was dressed in leather leggings and a tightly wrapped shirt, his hair in a braid behind him. The only thing that was the same was his playful, hungry expression, and the fact that it never left Caleb.

 

“Language, dearest,” Artagan laughed, snapping the sword to one side to shake free blades of grass like drops of blood, “I only want to play.”

 

Artagan sprang at him again, laughing in delight as Caleb managed to find his feet. He swung again, and this time Caleb cast shield, Artagan pushing him back as he pressed against the force. 

 

“Ah ah ah,” Artagan grinned, snapping the fingers on his free hand, and Caleb felt the shield dissipate instantly, the warm line of Artagan’s body taking him to the ground and knocking the wind out of him, the flat of the blade not cutting into Caleb’s neck but its edge dangerously close. All Artagan would need to do would be to rotate his wrist slightly in either direction. 

 

“If you keep using your old tricks, I might start to think that you don’t like the marvelous new toys I’ve given you,” Artagan murmured against his ear, nipping his earlobe and getting up. 

 

“I don’t…” Caleb wheezed, trying to get his breath back, “Artagan, please, I--”

 

“Think, clever boy,” Artagan sighed, squaring his shoulders and his hips, saluting Caleb with his blade bisecting his beautiful, terrifying smile, and launching himself again. 

 

Caleb used every spell he had, slow, sleep, cast mage armor on himself, all while retreating, and every time, Artagan just laughed and waved it out of existence. 

 

“Think harder!” Artagan ordered, practically skipping as he bounded after Caleb who, despite running full tilt, couldn’t seem to put any distance between them. “And do it quickly!”

 

Caleb felt himself jerked back as Artagan caught the back of his coat and yanked.

 

“Or perhaps,” Artagan laughed, winding an arm under Caleb’s and then behind his neck, fisting his hand in Caleb’s hair and locking him in place with his back to Artagan’s chest, “stop thinking. Or at least stop thinking like a wizard for a moment.”

 

The blade in Artagan’s other hand rose closer and closer to Caleb’s throat, arched and bared by Artagan’s grip pulling his head back. Caleb trembled, imagining in advance the bite of the metal into his flesh, the chill that he would feel as his blood poured out of his body that not even the Feywild summer could warm. He couldn’t think of a single spell that Artagan hadn’t already swept aside, and even if he could, his hands were empty.

 

Empty, until they weren’t. The hand of Caleb’s restrained left arm closed around something hard and cool, and his right hand moved without thinking, grabbing, drawing, and twisting. Artagan’s sword stopped with a scraping metal chime that hurt Caleb’s ears as he blocked it with another blade.

 

“ _ Finally, _ ” Artagan exclaimed, letting go of Caleb’s hair and holding him tightly by the waist instead, a delighted hug accompanied by a wet, eager kiss to Caleb’s cheek. “You very nearly hurt my feelings, you know.”

 

In a flash, Artagan let him go and was gone from Caleb’s back. Without the pull he’d been resisting, Caleb staggered forward, turning as he caught himself.  

 

In one hand, Caleb had the pearly pale scabbard, and in the other, the sword that went with it. He hadn’t drawn it in the waking world, not yet, too much going on, too busy, too afraid of what could happen. He hadn’t known where it had come from, though he could guess, and he hadn’t had time to cast identify on it. 

 

The metal of the blade was almost white, but it had a faint yellow-green cast to it when the sun hit it just so, it was the color of split green wood, or the pith of a stem. The guard, previously plain metal, was shifting, ivy growing and reaching around Caleb’s hand to form a basket hilt, the ivy matching the enamel pattern on the scabbard. While the basket would protect the wielder’s fingers from any errant strikes, it also made it impossible to drop, which Caleb very badly wished to do.

 

“I thought it suited you,” Artagan said fondly. “Your name, Widogast, means guest of the woods, doesn’t it? Ivy is… well. It is the uninvited guest of the woods, my darling one. Invitations are terribly overrated, I think.”

 

Caleb shook his hand a bit, trying to free himself of the sword.

 

“It is very lovely, Artagan, but I do not have the first idea how to  _ use it, _ ” Caleb replied frantically. Artagan rolled his eyes.

 

“Precious thing, did you not come to me to learn new tricks?” Artagan asked, whipping his own blade once, twice, slicing through the air. “Well.  _ Learn. _ ”

 

Artagan strode towards Caleb again, aiming for his throat this time. Caleb staggered back, flailing, the hand protected by the basket accidentally punching Artagan’s blade out of the way by pure chance.  

 

“Better, closer, but the blade is more the thing, Caleb Widogast,” Artagan crowed, grabbing Caleb’s wrist above the hand still holding the scabbard, yanking him forward, and slapping him across the ass with the flat of his blade as Caleb sailed past. “Come now, bring up your guard.”

 

Caleb tried to find his feet, tried to get the rhythm, and was making some progress, but it was slow, and not without error. His scarf was shredded, the weave slashed and falling to bits of yarn in the grass. His shirt was next, his coat following. Artagan cut and slashed the center seam along Caleb’s back, and just like that, Caleb was bound by his own sleeves and falling to his knees.

 

“Oh dear, dear, dear,” Artagan tisked. “Very good, Caleb, but not quite good enough.”  

 

Caleb was exhausted, short of breath, hair falling in his face as he tried to speak. 

 

“I was… I was never much of an athlete,” Caleb finally managed. Artagan nodded sympathetically, pointing the tip of the sword at Caleb’s heart, shining like a sunbeam.  Artagan’s free hand fell on Caleb’s shoulder for better leverage. 

 

“Sorry,” Caleb sighed, looking up at Artagan. “I knew all along that you would come to regret our bargain. I hope you understand.”

 

Artagan laughed, bright and musical.  It was a terribly nice final sound to hear.  

 

“I do, Caleb Widogast,” Artagan said, “more than you know.”

 

Artagan pulled Caleb forward by the shoulder, and Caleb looked down, morbidly curious to see the blade pierce his chest, but it crumbled away to little motes of light, so rather than being dead, Caleb found himself being drawn in by Artagan once again, pulled against his chest for another hug.

 

“You are so clever and yet a perfect little imbecile all at the same time,” Artagan murmured. “Have I cut you, even once?”

 

Caleb looked himself over, what he could see from being held, and though his clothes were torn to bits, there wasn’t a scratch on him. Artagan loosened his grip, tucked Caleb’s hair out of his face and then flicked his forehead, much as Beau had done.

 

“I wouldn’t be much of an archfey if I couldn’t do a simple trick like create a sword out of light that could cut anything but you,” Artagan said petulantly. 

 

“Well, you were very convincing,” Caleb replied. Artagan huffed and tugged until Caleb’s head rested on his shoulder.  

 

“Fool,” Artagan scolded, kissing his temple. 

 

“I am,” Caleb agreed. “So foolish that I cannot work out how to put down this sword.”

 

Artagan laughed, sitting back. 

 

“Put it in the scabbard,” Artagan answered, helping Caleb free of his destroyed coat. The moment Caleb sheathed the sword, the vines released his hand. “Ta da!”

 

“Why a sword?” Caleb asked flopping back into the grass, still quite exhausted.

 

“Tradition,” Artagan shrugged. “These pacts come with a symbol of the bond. Some use a book, but that is a bit too in your comfort zone.”

 

Artagan plucked at the now exposed leather holster of his books, and Caleb shrugged, as there wasn’t much argument he could give to that.

 

“For others, it’s a familiar, but Frumpkin has that well in hand, paw, talon, or tentacle. The final tradition is a weapon.”

 

“What does one get for the man who has everything?” Caleb chuckled. “But I am not very good with it.”

 

“You’ll learn,” Artagan assured him. “Soon you’ll be like your friend, the sailor, and be able to summon it and dismiss it all on your own.”

 

Caleb blinked.

 

“So he has made a pact as well,” he said. “That explains a great deal. Hopefully you will not have me pressing ancient artifacts directly into my stomach?”

 

Artagan cackled, flopping elegantly next to Caleb in the grass and patting his belly.

 

“While that sounds utterly fascinating, they would have to be quite tiny, or you are going to have to start spending your money on more food than on ink. No, I don’t plan on having you consume anything inedible.”

 

“Anything is edible if you are determined enough,” Caleb commented, thinking back to the skeleton chat, and how impressed Molly had looked at his assertion. Artagan giggled.

 

“You are so magnificently peculiar,” he beamed. “How could you think that I could regret bargaining with you?”

 

Caleb said nothing, and Artagan’s giggles subsided, and he reached out, finding Caleb’s hand.

 

“I know,” Artagan said. “I know. A bad habit that you will need to break, my dear one.”

 

Caleb sighed.

 

“I do not think that will be possible. But I commend your ambition,” Caleb chuckled. Artagan tightened his grip, and brought Caleb’s hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. 

 

“I am not the sort of thing you should say that to, darling,” Artagan answered, the breath of the words articulated against Caleb’s skin. “I abhor limits. And the more you deny my ability, the harder I will drive us both to prove you wrong.”

 

Caleb could feel a slight tremor, and rolled to his side to see what was wrong, and saw Artagan’s eyes a little distant, a little glassy.

 

“Artagan…?”

 

“Please,” Artagan said, the tremor reaching his voice now, “try not to say such things around me, Caleb. I am trying…”

 

Artagan sucked in a great breath.

 

“...I am trying to be kind, which I can be. But the kindness you need requires patience, and I am very, very bad at patience.”

 

Caleb shifted closer, and he felt a bit like when Frumpkin rolled onto his back and showed his belly, wriggling like he wished to be petted there. He was so, so tempted, every time, even though he knew that claws and teeth awaited, unless he commanded otherwise (sometimes even when he did, because he had asked, before and after all other things, that Frumpkin behave like a cat).  Artagan’s eyes were shut tight, a tiny crease between his brows, concentrating very hard indeed.

 

“What do you mean?” Caleb asked, and nearly jolted backward when Artagan’s eyes snapped open, intent on Caleb’s own.

 

“Some people can take the time to carefully unwrap a present they have been given.  Some can sit for hours unpicking a snarled knot if what they want is bound by it. Some can see a wooden gate which is locked, and they will wait to be let in, or climb over, or pick the lock, or dig under,” Artagan said, sitting up, releasing Caleb’s hand and taking his face in both hands instead.

 

“Some creatures are good at patience, are good at resisting, are good at taking the long,  _ boring,  _ slow way around a problem which leaves no evidence, no scars, no casualties,” he elaborated. 

 

Caleb swallowed very hard and remained very still.

 

“Caleb, Caleb, little witch, do you think that I am one of those creatures?” Artagan asked, stroking Caleb’s hair back with one hand, chin still held in the other.  “Do you think that I am a thing that is made of patience, of restraint?”

 

Caleb shut his eyes.

 

“No, please don’t do that, please look at me,” Artagan demanded, but each please was real, he was really begging even as he insisted. Caleb opened his eyes.  “Please answer me.”

 

“No,” Caleb murmured. “No, of course not.”

 

Some of the tension left Artagan, a little calm creeping in onto his face.

 

“No, I am not,” he said. “It is easier for me to be so when I am not reminded of what is just beyond my reach, Caleb, and far, far harder when it is suggested that the thing that I want will never be.  Do not remind me that I mustn’t rend a parcel in half lest I destroy the gift inside. Do not remind me that there is a reason that people don’t just slice through knots that impede them. Because I will forget. I will… I will become unwise in a way that you do not want, and that I, when I am able to be my most careful, remember that  _ I  _ do not want. Please don’t remind me of how long I may have to wait to free what is behind a locked gate, because I will burn it. I will slice, and tear, and destroy, and as much as you have survived so far, I am not sure that you would survive that.  So please, please, remember that I am not human, that I am not mortal, and that I do not think as you think, or feel as you feel. You must remember that of me so that I will remember the same of you. That you are mortal. That you are human. That you are delicate and that I must take great care with you.”

 

Caleb nodded in Artagan’s hands.

 

“It is easy to forget, powerful as you are, when you have shown me such kindness,” Caleb said carefully.  

 

Artagan smiled.

 

“Then I am doing very well,” he said. “But it is just as easy for me to forget that, powerful as you  _ could  _ be, you are not. Yet.”

 

_ Oh, _ Caleb thought, because it made sense, really. Just as he sometimes forgot that he and Artagan were not just two schoolboys, lounging in a field, playing pretend, sometimes Artagan forgot that Caleb was not like himself, and fell into thinking that Caleb was another indestructible thing of the Feywild. 

 

“I will be more careful,” Caleb said.  “I treasure your restraint every bit as much as the sword you’ve given me, or the spells you must’ve taught me since I woke up knowing them.  Thank you.” 

 

Artagan sagged in relief, hand going loose on Caleb’s jaw to lie against his cheek instead.

 

“You understand,” he breathed.  “You have no idea how many don’t, or can’t, how many think that they can train away my instinct like that of a faithful dog.  You understand.”

 

Caleb nodded again. Artagan was power and instinct and desire and feeling, barely, loosely held together, held back by his sentience, by his mind. 

 

“I understand,” Caleb said, and then, despite his terror, despite his understanding, added, “but you are the powerful one. You are the immortal. I will do my best to not remind you of those things that make your restraint more difficult, but--”

 

Artagan made a sulky face and groaned.

 

“--but I control my actions, not you.  Must you make so much  _ sense,  _ little witch?” 

 

“Because you would not be the first person with power over me to find my free will inconvenient,” Caleb said, a spark of anger flashing in him at being made to say this out loud, to explain something so obvious to something that claimed to know his soul. “Because I have  _ already  _ been cut open.”

 

Caleb's anger built, despite the distant voice of his reason begging him to stop.

 

“I was cut open and my insides rearranged so that I would be what someone powerful wanted, and it led to all the aspects of me of which you disapprove,  _ ja _ ? You cannot actually believe that you can do the same thing and expect a better result. I will not allow that. Not again. Not even from you. I am not much, but I am better than that. And so are you.”

 

And then he ran out of words, and Artagan didn't fill the silence that followed.

 

Caleb held his breath, waiting for the slice through the knot, the burning of the gate. 

 

It didn’t come.

 

“You’re wiser than you know, appealing to my vanity.  You may not train away my instinct, but you may have found a way to make,” and here, Artagan’s pout turned into a wrinkled grimace of disgust, “ _ responsibility _ more desirable than indulgence.”

 

For a moment, Artagan looked weary, like he had more of a stake in this game of theirs than amusement. Caleb found a little bit of pity rising in a heart not terribly used to it.

 

“I’m sorry,” Caleb said, sincere but exasperated, reaching out to smooth the wrinkles from Artagan’s brow, “but I will try not to make it harder. But you can. You can restrain yourself because only you ever could.”

 

Artagan sighed again. 

 

“Up,” he said. “I am going to exorcise my aggravation at the lack of instant gratification by making you better with that sword.”

 

It was Caleb’s turn to groan now, which brought back Artagan’s musical laughter, much to both of their reliefs.

 

“On your feet, Caleb Widogast!” Artagan sang, rising to his own and snatching a sunbeam out of the air into a blade. “You have miles to go before you wake!”

  
  


When he woke, Caleb had expected to be utterly exhausted, with his already ragged clothes in utter tatters, muscles locked in place from the most absurd workout he had experienced since…

 

Well. Better not to think of that.

 

Instead, he woke rested, only as tired and as stiff as one would expect from the journey, the cold, and the cave.  Artagan had chased him around with his sword for  _ hours, _ giving him occasional breaks for Caleb to pant in the grass while Artagan petted him and doted on him, then got him back on his feet. 

 

Artagan, by his own admission, didn't really have much patience, so most of what Caleb had learned was desperation rather than form or fundamentals, but at least it was something. Artagan had made him promise to keep the sword on his hip, and keep it close as he slept. 

 

Caleb woke, and when he opened his eyes, he was looking right into Molly's.

  
  
  
  


Caleb's eyes slipped open just a crack, and he looked right at Molly, open and vulnerable in his sleepiness. Between that and the gentle way Caleb held his tail, Molly felt soaringly brave.

 

“I'll make you a deal,” Molly whispered, trying not wake the others yet, mindful of the possible echoes in their little cave, of how close to each other they all were. 

 

“Oh?” Caleb murmured softly, rubbing at his face with the back of his hand in an adorably Frumpkinish way, the other still gently holding the tip of Molly’s tail.

 

“You seem to have taken possession of my tail at some point last night,” Molly smiled. Caleb froze for a moment, then looked down at his hand, muttering in Zemnian while blushing, near as Molly could tell in this low light.  

 

Molly patted Caleb’s hand, gathering it and his tail in between both of Molly’s own, trapping them all together, all while putting on his best carnival patter. 

 

“My own fault for losing track of it, but as I said, I’ll make you a deal: Return my tail, and I’ll return to you the Periapt,” he proposed.  Caleb’s embarrassment gave way to stubbornness, and he opened his mouth to argue, but then he stopped, looking at Molly’s face, and the stubbornness gave way to confusion.  Molly fluttered his eyelashes. “I mean, I need my tail, I’m afraid, otherwise I’ll be falling over all the time, it’s a balance thing. I’m sorry, but I have to have it back, or I’ll never dance again.”

 

Caleb glanced down at their hands, and smiled again, but it was such a sad, wistful little thing, even by Caleb’s standards.

 

“Well,” Caleb said softly, tugging his hand free of Molly’s, so carefully that he left Molly holding his own tail-tip. “For balance, you say? I do not think I could ransom that from you.”

 

Molly didn’t know what to do as Caleb broke eye contact, shifting as though he meant to turn his back to Molly and try to get more sleep, to leave Molly confused and bereft about what had passed between them in that moment, about what was going on in Caleb’s clever head. 

 

So, being Molly, he panicked a bit. 

 

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said, a little too loudly, reaching out but stopping short of touching Caleb.  Caleb stilled and looked back. Molly dropped his voice to a whisper again. 

 

“I’m sorry.  I’m sorry for pushing. I’ll stop asking you to tell me more about what happened, and why, and…”

 

Molly stopped himself as Caleb’s brows knit again, his head tilting in that slightly canine way.

 

“Can we please be friends again?” Molly asked, opening his hands and letting his own tail slip away to curl behind him.  

 

Caleb cut his eyes to the side and cleared his throat.

 

“Were we--”

 

Oh no, no, Molly couldn’t bear that, that was too much, too unfair, and he interrupted.

 

“And please don’t ask me if we were friends before, because we were. We  _ were _ . You said so yourself. Just… it’s hard enough that our friends were taken from us, please don’t pull away from me too.”

 

Molly reached for Caleb’s open hand, waited to give him a moment to pull it away, and when he didn’t, Molly took it back and squeezed it. 

 

“You… you are friends rather quickly and with many, Mollymauk,” Caleb said cautiously, allowing the contact. “You said as much to Nila only moments after meeting her.” 

 

Caleb got that sweet, sorrowful look again, smiling at Molly.

 

“‘Molly to my friends,’” Caleb quoted him. “I had thought that I would never hear that said again, that we had lost you. I was a bit… I think that was why I reacted so strongly to hearing it again.”

 

Oh. 

 

Molly's heart did a little pirouette. 

 

_ Oh. _

 

But Caleb was continuing, still speaking reasonably and trying to explain himself, like the idea that someone cared so much about Molly that they would weep just for having heard him say a stupid but familiar thing again wouldn't sustain Molly for a month or more.

 

“I do not fault you for it, but… I am not so good at being friends, not in the way that you are. I cannot be so open. I am not easy to like or to care about,” Caleb said.

 

“You certainly work hard to make it seem so,” Molly murmured back, ignoring the confusion that set back in on Caleb's face.

 

“It is… it is easier than the alternative,” Caleb replied after a moment. “We will find ourselves in more and more danger, Molly.”

 

“I did notice that, a bit,” Molly chuckled, but Caleb's face remained grave. Molly paused, considering. “What is it that you're afraid is going to happen, Caleb?”

 

Caleb was silent for a moment longer, before saying:

 

“I am afraid that you will meet me, one day. I am afraid you will know me, and that every warning I have given you will make sense all at once.”

 

Caleb did pull his hand away then, sitting up, and the shutters started to fall, and that wasn't what Molly wanted, not at all.

 

“Too bad,” Molly blurted. “We're still friends.”

 

Caleb turned, blinking. Molly put his hands under his head, posing in relaxation as though on a beach.

 

“Don't look at me like that, we are,” Molly retorted with a raised eyebrow. Caleb looked away, getting to his feet.

 

Molly took a look at the mouth of the cave, where the sunlight was starting to pool in. They were going to have to get going in a moment, and they’d need to be on their guard… a little adrenaline couldn’t hurt.

 

“HEY BEAU!” Molly roared at the top of his lungs, waking  _ everyone _ .

 

“I’m up!” Nott squawked, waving her crossbow furiously at the cave ceiling.

 

“Fuck me--” Keg yelled, rolling over too quickly and yelping in pain as she hit her own head on her own warhammer.

 

“Why are we all shouting?” Nila asked at a normal volume, bewildered, sitting up. “Should I also be shouting?”

 

“Molly, what the  _ fuck? _ ” Beau asked, grabbing her staff. All four women were looking around for the disturbance, and all their eyes fell on the only person standing, an increasingly stricken looking Caleb.  Molly grinned ear to ear, fangs flashing in the morning light, and pointed at Caleb.

 

“Beau, Caleb won’t say we’re friends!” 

 

Caleb rolled his eyes, clearly expecting Molly to be told off for waking Beau for something so juvenile. He shrank back a bit as Beau scowled like a thunderous sky.

 

“He fuckin’  _ what? _ ” she growled. Molly’s face hurt from grinning this hard, made even more gleeful by Nott sighing.

 

“Caleb, we’ve talked about this…” she said, shaking her head in maternal disappointment as Beau got to her feet.

 

“Hey Caleb, remember how I said that we were a fuckin’ family?”

 

“...ja…”

 

Beau adjusted the wraps around her hands, examining her fingernails. 

 

“And remember what I said about beating the next person who tried to fuck that up into a mist?”

 

“You said paste.”

 

Beaus eyes snapped up and locked onto Caleb, pinning him in place.

 

“So you do remember.”

 

“...ja.”

 

Beau tilted her head to her left, cracking her neck.

 

“Are you trying to fuck it up, Caleb?”

 

“No…”

 

“Good. Molly. Stand the fuck up.”

 

Molly bounced to his feet, careful not to step on any of the others. Beau, satisfied that Molly was attentive and present, addressed Caleb:

 

“Caleb. Tell Molly that you’re friends,” Beau ordered.

 

Caleb sighed.

 

“Beauregard--” and that was as far as he got.

 

“ _ Say that you are fucking friends, Caleb, _ ” Beau snarled.  “Say ‘Molly, you and I are friends,’ or I swear to all the goddamn gods…”

 

Caleb looked bewildered, and stubborn, and very frustrated that there was nowhere for him to storm off  _ to.  _

 

“Mollymauk--” he started, low and flat.

 

“Molly,” Molly corrected, “to my friends.”

 

A wave of terrible vulnerability, perhaps with a touch of betrayal that Molly had used that against him already, and Molly might’ve felt bad, except that now Caleb looked like he fucking meant it when he said:

 

“Molly, you and I are friends.”

 

Beau nodded, rubbing her hands over her face in her exhaustion and aggravation.

 

“Good. Now hug,” she ordered.

 

Caleb’s eyebrows shot up, mouth opening again.

 

“ _ Fucking hug, _ ” Beau roared, her voice echoing in the tiny cave. Molly opened his arms, and Caleb walked over and wrapped his arms around Molly’s torso.

 

“You are evil,” Caleb said softly against his jaw, and Molly laughed and threw his arms around Caleb.

 

“Made you say we’re friends,” Molly replied, squeezing him tighter, lifting him up to the balls of his feet just a bit. “No takebacks.”

 

Caleb sighed, and almost too quiet for Molly to hear, murmured,

 

“Ja. No takebacks from me.”

 

“Cool, that’s fucking touching, now we’ve got like two minutes to pack up and move since literally everything with working ears in a five mile radius probably heard that shit,” Keg said, already wrapping her bedroll. Molly let go of Caleb, and the two of them got to work doing the same.

 

“How are you feeling?” Nott asked Molly. “Sleep well? Feeling any stronger?”

 

“I slept really well, actually,” Molly said. “The Moonweaver visited me.”

 

Caleb’s hands froze mid-tie.

 

“You dreamed of the Moonweaver?” Nott asked.

 

“No, the Moonweaver visited me in a dream,” Molly corrected. “You’re all very adorable when you sleep.” 

 

Nott’s brows knit and she worried her lower lip in her teeth.

 

“How can you be sure you weren’t just dreaming?” she asked. 

 

“He wasn’t,” Caleb said, picking up his bedroll and hastily heading back outside.

 

“...well that was....”

 

“Yes, certainly think we’ll be needing to revisit that reaction at some point today,” Molly agreed, packing up himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary of the conversation in question: Caleb suggests that he doesn't think Artagan's goal of improving Caleb's sense of self-worth is possible, and Artagan warns Caleb that telling him that things can't be done makes him less patient and more likely to push Caleb's 'improvement' too far, too fast, in a way that would be unkind to Caleb. There is an implication for Artagan that Caleb shouldn't 'tempt' him. Caleb puts him in his place and informs Artagan that, as the one in power in their dynamic, Artagan is responsible for his own actions and responsible for restraining his own damn self. 
> 
> Again, sorry if this is a bit too much worrying on my part, but there's that power imbalance, and even though Caleb calls Artagan on it, I wanted to warn for it.
> 
> To skip the conversation, stop at the sentence containing the word "habit," and restart at the sentence containing the word "exorcise."


	7. Respite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The remainder of the group arrive in Shady Creek Run, arrangements are made for an overnight stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the long delay, work/life/adult crap getting in the way. Warnings for me not understanding how haircare works in Exandria, like, at all, but going on the assumption that herbal essences is not a thing.

There wasn't much time to talk, pushing at the pace they were, but they made it through the gates to Shady Creek Run with only a minimal bribe.

 

Fuck, this was a horrific place. They pulled off into an alley to emerge from their respective hiding places, Caleb dropping his disguise. Molly pulled his hood low and kept his head down, resisting the urge to start slipping silver into the pocket of every beggar he saw.  Not the time. Possibly the place, but certainly, unfortunately, not the time.

 

“Well,” Nott said, casting her still-disguised gaze around with grim focus, looking for any threat or false move. Of course she would know how to navigate this, Molly scolded himself; while he had been treated with great disrespect in various towns, Nott was likely the only one among them who knew what it was like to risk being murdered on sight. “Where now?”

 

“There's a place…” Keg started, the put her hands on her hips and sighed. “Okay, there's a brothel, a whore house, which is probably the safest place in town to stay. It's called the Landlocked Lady, and… look. It's the best we can do here, okay?”

 

Keg paced around in a little circle in the alley, clearly on edge just by being in town, and continued:

 

“It’s owned by the Marduns, and they fuckin’ hate the family that bankrolls the Iron Shepherds. We’re not gonna run into anyone who’ll turn us in there. The other place is just run by a dragonborn lady who routinely kills people who rub her the wrong way.”

 

Caleb glanced quickly at Nott, Beau, Molly, and Nila.

 

“I do not think any of us is opposed to brothels, so long as everyone who works there does so by choice,” Caleb replied.

 

“The Marduns aren't into that shit,” Keg answered. “Or if they are, they've managed to keep it a secret from the whole town for as long as I've been around.”

 

“To be honest, I could stand to blow off some steam,” Beau said, “but I want to hire some extra muscle more. Still, this sounds like the best place. It's fucking cold and I'm fucking tired.”

 

Nila leaned down to bring her face closer to the group and whispered quietly:

 

“What is a ‘brothel’?”

 

Keg blinked.

 

“Oh fuck,” she said.  “Okay.”

 

Keg led them to the mermaid-prowed building, and the preposterous proprietor seemed quite thrilled to see them, despite Keg calling him out about the actual ownership of the place.

 

During their discussion, Molly's attention waxed and waned. He found himself distracted from the discussions with the innkeeper-cum-panderer by the smells of the place, and the patchwork ostentatiousness of the brothel that made his heart ache a bit for the Fletching and Moondrop. If they survived this, he really should try to get word on how Gustav was fairing in Trostenwold.

 

“Are you sure you're not looking for work?” Champ, the aforementioned proprietor, asked Nila, and, when Keg rebuffed him on her behalf, turned his attention to Molly. “Oh well, how about you?”

 

Molly shrugged cheerfully.

 

“I'm saving myself for marriage,” he said regretfully, making Nott snort softly next to him. “But you know what?”

 

Molly stepped back from the counter and threw his arm around Beau’s shoulders. Fortunately, he did not get immediately punched in the ribs, so he continued:

 

“This stern looking stunner deserves a room and companionship, on me,” he tilted his head to look her in the eyes.  “Beau, how long do you think you want to blow off steam for?”

 

_What will it take to keep you holding our shit together, because I don't think any of the rest of us are ready, I know that I'm not and I'm sorry and that's so unfair to you and, and, and..._

 

Beau blinked, and thought.

 

“Uhhh. An hour? And then I want to get very drunk and be alone.”

 

Molly squared away that transaction, then looked over at Caleb.

 

“What about you?” he asked, cocking a smile but still dead serious.  “Any companionship?”

 

Molly could swear he could hear Caleb's dismissive, bemused blink.

 

“You are funny,” Caleb said flatly. Molly shrugged.

 

“Nott?”

 

“I'm all right, Molly, but thanks for thinking of me,” Nott replied, seeming quite sincerely touched. “You're welcome to share a room with Caleb and me if you're not planning on companionship yourself, and if you don't feel like being alone. Right, Caleb?”

 

“Mm. Ja, of course,” Caleb said. “So another room for three, if you do not mind.”

 

“Certainly. We've only one bed to our remaining rooms, but they are fairly spacious, and if that's not too your taste, there's always the sofa.”

 

Caleb narrowed his eyes.

 

“And do you charge extra for the smutty book cliches, or are those on the house?” he asked, prompting a little snicker from Molly. Champ just grinned more broadly.

 

“I'm not much of a reader,” Champ replied, and held out his palm. “Two gold for the tall and small pair, two gold and a silver for the exotic trio.”

 

Keg handed over her two gold, and Caleb counted out the money, entirely in silver, into Champ's hand, coin by coin.

 

Champ asked Beau for her preferences regarding companionship. Molly was a little surprised that she was so indiscriminate, thinking for sure that she'd ask for someone taller and broader than herself, preferably pale, preferably able to snap her like a twig.

 

He respected Beau a little more for recognizing that Yasha was one of a kind.

 

They made their way up the stairs, carpeted with chunks of other rugs which had been cut to resemble scales, though they hadn't been well-sealed and the edges were shedding and threadbare. Molly liked it anyway, feeling like he was balancing on the windy, shaggy tail of a friendly old dragon.

 

“Well, I for one am going to get absolutely plastered,” Molly said with a stretch when they reached the landing. “Gotta break in life number three. Anyone care to join me in the bar?”

 

“Do it in your room,” Beau ordered. Molly raised an eyebrow at her, but her expression didn’t budge. “You're distinctive as fuck, Molly, best case you get robbed for all your fucking money and left in an alley to get spit on by assholes.”

 

“I realize I died, but-”

 

Beau grabbed his shirt and yanked him in, hissing furiously in his ear:

 

“I don’t want Caleb to be alone,” too softly for anyone else to hear, “‘cause I don’t know if Nott could keep him from running off this time. Now call me an asshole, agree with me, and the stay on him, okay?”

 

Molly really, really wanted to make a joke about how happy he would be to stay on Caleb, but pulled free from Beau’s grip.

 

“Fine, fine! Asshole!” Molly snapped, muttering, “Who _raised_ you?”

 

“Other assholes,” Beau said, patting Molly’s face unnecessarily hard. “Night!”

 

Beau stalked to her room, went in, and slammed the door behind her.  Nila and Keg had already had already retreated as they ‘argued,’ and Nott stood at his knee, Caleb by the door to their room.  Nott peered up at Molly with big fretful eyes.

 

“Are you--” she started, but Molly mussed her hair and smiled.

 

“Just realizing Beau is making far more sense than I am comfortable accepting from her,” Molly crouched down. “Nott? Darling? Would _you_ like to get plastered with me?”

 

Nott broke into a delighted grin.

 

“Mollymauk, it would be my honor,” she replied, offering her hand.

 

If Caleb looked a little gray at the prospect, he persevered and opened the door, ushering them in nonetheless.

 

The room was a travesty, and Molly loved it. Mismatched vases, vaguely erotic statuary with missing bits, a rummage sale of pseudo-luxury before them.  There were piles of pillows and blankets on the giant, oval bed, which smelled like wisteria, and to his eye had been thoroughly cleaned. Perhaps they had someone who could do that prestidigitation thing Pumat had done to Caleb.

 

Speaking of.

 

Caleb carefully hung up his coat- fuck Molly's _life,_ that godsforsaken book harness that framed the difference in width between Caleb's shoulders and waist- and looked around the room, Nott puttering around to check every nook and cranny.

 

“There is a tub,” he observed, crossing the floor to pull back a heavy velvet curtain with intermittent missing threads in its fringe, and Molly darted over to see.  It was a large ceramic tub, big enough to fit two people if they wanted to get _quite_ cozy. There was a water pump, around which a sign hung: “Hot water: Three gold per tubful.”

 

“That… that is highway robbery, and I may be willing to pay it to wash away the last bits of death.”

 

Caleb opened his mouth, shut it again, and then said,

 

“You will not be paying that. Just let me know when you want to bathe, I can take care of it,” Caleb said, brushing past Molly. He drew the strange new sword in its scabbard out of its awkward position jammed through his belt and laid it carefully on the bed, then sat on the edge of the mattress to unlace his boots.

 

Molly followed, sitting on the promised fainting couch and doing the same. Nott had poured a two shots of liquor from her flask into mismatched ceramic cups and offered them up. Molly reached out and knocked one back, and to his surprise, so did Caleb. They both flinched a little, Molly hissing, Caleb cursing in Zemnian, and Molly set his cup back down.

 

“Not that I don't appreciate your particular vintage, Nott,” Molly said, “but I could use something sweet. Mead, maybe. If Caleb's saving me from getting gouged on warm water, I can afford it. Would you mind making a run to the bar?”

 

Nott nodded eargerly. Molly handed her the three gold he wouldn’t be needing for hot water, and she turned back into Rissa.

 

“Back in a tick!” she beamed, running off.

 

“No rat food!” Caleb called after her, sighing as the door slammed.  

 

“So,” Molly said, unlacing his other boot. “You were very sure that I wasn't dreaming, and that the Weaver had visited me. Almost like you'd experienced something similar.”

 

Caleb's eyes slid off to the side, chucking one boot, then the other, towards the wall next to the door.

 

“It would seem that dreams are a common method for greater beings to speak to little beasts like us,” Caleb replied.

 

Molly paused.

 

“Your soul-renter?” he asked.

 

“I believe ‘patron’ is the preferred term,” Caleb said, “but, ja.”

 

“What do you talk about?” Molly asked, his other foot freed, toes wiggling. Caleb tilted his head from side to side.

 

“Ehhh…” Caleb murmured. “Well. This last night? Fencing lessons, sort of.”

 

Molly looked shrewdly at him.

 

“And the sleep before?”

 

Caleb gave a weary sigh.

 

“This and that,” he said. “Mostly, I suppose, we talk about me.”

 

Molly’s eyebrows shot up.

 

“Your favorite topic,” Molly joked, holding up his hands for mercy when Caleb shot him a withering scowl.

 

“It will pass,” Caleb muttered. “I am a… well, hardly shiny, but a new toy nonetheless; he will get bored of talking of me eventually and I’m sure then I will know what exactly he _wants._ ”

 

Molly sprawled out on the couch, looking at Caleb.  

 

“What’s he like?” Molly asked. “I’m having difficulty imagining the sort of being that agrees to resurrect someone in exchange for a toy.”

 

Caleb stood again, unbuckling the book harness, setting it and the books within on a table near the bed.

 

“Extravagant,” Caleb said, after a thought. “Dramatic, expressive. Affectionate.”

 

Molly sat back up at that.

 

_“Affectionate?”_ he asked, peering hard at Caleb.  “Affectionate how?”

 

Caleb shrugged, walking back towards the tub, drawing back the curtain. He knelt down and raised the arm on the water pump, filling it one gush at a time.

 

“I don’t really know how to ask this tactfully,” Molly asked, stomach dropping.  “But are you being forced into sex with this patron of yours?”

 

Caleb startled, grabbing the curtain so hard that he nearly tore it from the ceiling.

 

“What? No!  For goodness’ sake, Molly, I am _not_ having sex with… no!”

 

Molly sagged, hands on his knees, breathing out long in relief.

 

“Why would you suggest that?!” Caleb exclaimed. Molly flailed his hands in the air.

 

“Because you said that the person who owns- whatever, _rents_ your soul is ‘affectionate,’ and I’ve never seen you voluntarily accept affection in the whole time I’ve known you from anyone except for Frumpkin or Nott!” Molly exclaimed.

 

“No, no,” Caleb elaborated, sticking his fingers in the water. “Fuck, that’s cold.  No, he… He is concerned with how I treat myself. And there is certainly more contact than I am used to, but it is not so bad. I don’t know if you can really call it physical contact if it only occurs in your dreams.”

 

Molly looked at him dubiously.

 

“The Moonweaver petted my hair, held me, let me rest my head in her lap, and it all felt quite real to me,” Molly said.

 

“Oh, ja?” Caleb asked, leaping at the chance to change the subject off of himself. “And what did you two talk about?”

 

Molly tilted his head as Caleb’s hands glowed with blue flame and he sunk them into the water, swirling them around.

 

“We talked about you, mostly,” Molly said, the sloshing sounds subsiding as Caleb went very still. “And a little about your patron, ‘Artagan,’ I think she said?”

 

Caleb nodded.

 

“Ja, that is his name,” Caleb murmured. “Or at least what he wishes to be called.  I am glad that the Moonweaver was kind to you.”

 

“She’s looking out for you, too, you know,” Molly said. “She’s going to try to make sure that Artagan treats you right.”

 

“Your goddess has a good heart,” Caleb agreed, hands starting to move again. “She was present the first time that I met Artagan, and she helped the negotiations.  I am glad that you got to meet her.”

 

“Is Artagan good and kind to you, Caleb?” Molly asked.  Caleb stood, shaking his hands free of water drops, and started undressing without bothering to pull the curtain back around.

 

“When we are conversing, very,” Caleb answered, and Molly shut his eyes, half in relief, half in self-preservation. “When he is trying to teach me how to use a sword, well… I am not sure how you can be kind while trying to stab someone.”

 

Molly’s eyes snapped back open.

 

“Your patron tried to _stab_ you,” he said, keeping his eyes on Caleb’s face as he stepped into the tub and settled down into the hot water with a contented moan. “For fuck’s sake, Caleb!”

 

“He took precautions,” Caleb replied, waving his hand dismissively. “A blade of light that cut only my clothes but not my skin.”

 

Molly didn’t feel relieved in the slightest.

 

“Kinky,” Molly said flatly, getting an equally flat look for his trouble.  “And you’re okay with this?”

 

Caleb shrugged.

 

“It is what I agreed to,” Caleb answered. “Which is not really what you asked, but it is all that matters in this situation.”

 

Molly groaned.

 

“I don’t suppose you would you answer if I told you that it matters to me?” he asked.  Caleb considered.

 

“I don’t know if I’m ‘okay’ with it,” Caleb said, waggling his fingers in the air around the word before flopping them back over the sides of the tub. “I haven’t been run around and chased like that since I was a boy. I haven’t had this kind of affection since I was a boy.  I have no idea if I am okay with it or not, Molly. I don’t know how I feel about it.”

 

“Okay,” Molly nodded slowly. “How do you feel about going to sleep?”

 

Caleb chuckled.

 

“You are very perceptive.”

 

Molly smiled at that.

 

“I am, but that’s not an answer.”

 

Caleb thought for a moment before answering.

 

“It is early days, yet, but I have been sleeping better.  The Feywild is a very beautiful place, a perfect summer day, full of beautiful flowers. It is where Frumpkin goes when he is not here. Compared to the cold we’ve been traveling under, it’s even more of a paradise.”

 

“And your patron is there and shows you affection in this paradise,” Molly murmured thoughtfully, “when he’s not chasing you with a sword.”

 

Caleb chuckled a little.

 

“You know, even that seems affectionate, in a sort of Beauregard-esque way. It is well-meant. He is trying to teach me to protect myself better.”

 

Molly cocked his head. Caleb was, as they all liked to gently put it, ‘squishy.’ He didn’t have righteous rage, or holy protection, not like the rest of them. Though neither had Molly, but then again, look at how well that had worked out.

 

A little more guilt twisted Molly’s gut. Maybe there was more to Caleb selling off his soul than bringing Molly back after all, maybe he didn’t believe that the group would, or could, protect him.

 

“Isn’t that why we all have each other?” Molly asked.  

 

Caleb gave Molly a weary look.

 

“I do not want to be the one who gets someone killed again,” he replied.  

 

Molly didn’t ask what Caleb meant by ‘again,’ since Caleb hadn’t been the one to get Molly killed.  He had promised not to push. Instead, he got up, wandering around the room, opening drawers and cabinets, until he found a little pile of soaps wrapped in paper, along with tiny phials of scented oils.

 

“So your patron hasn’t given you _any_ errands so far in the waking world?” Molly asked, raising each to his nose and smelling each fragrance.

 

“No-- well, one,” Caleb amended, swirling the water a little more, “but was very vague. He instructed me to attend to myself a bit better.”

 

Molly laughed, casting a look back over his shoulder.

 

“Is your patron in cahoots with Jester?”

 

Caleb considered this.

 

“They would certainly get along, I would say,” he murmured, “he seems to like to be… similarly provocative?  A bit of a prankster?”

 

“And he wants you to look after yourself,” Molly pointed out.  “I think we’re all on board for that, to be honest.”

 

Caleb gave a rueful smile, sinking further into the water.

 

“Jester just wants for me to be less ‘stinky’ as she likes to say it,” he laughed.  Molly shrugged in response.

 

“If you say so,” Molly said. “I’m pretty sure she just wants you to be healthy and to treat yourself as kindly as you treat the rest of us.”

 

Caleb sighed.

 

“I am as kind as it takes to keep you all from throwing me out,” he said wearily. “Like a sweet given to make it possible to keep down something bitter, ja?”

 

Molly picked out a soap scented with something like rum and bayberry, one that smelled like vanilla and leather, and a couple small bottles of oil, one musky and spicy, the other smelling vaguely of honey. There were even two combs made of bone or horn with only a couple missing teeth.  Molly grabbed those, as well as a few clean washrags, and strolled over, hooking his ankle around the leg of a low footstool to tug it beside the tub.

 

“Yep, people regularly sell their souls just to stay in the good graces of their friends, that makes sense,” Molly scoffed lightly, plunking down on the stool and lightly tossing one of the rags over Caleb's face. “And I died for Beau just to one up her.”

 

Caleb reached up and removed the rag, opening one eye.

 

“Perhaps I am… er…” Caleb circled his hand in the air a little as he searched for the idiom in Common. “Playing the long game?”

 

Molly rolled his eyes and sighed.

 

“If you say so,” Molly said, holding out the first bar of soap. “Smell.”

 

Caleb considered the soaps and the oils, then chose the bay rum soap and the honey-scented oil. Molly unwrapped it from its little cloth and handed it to Caleb.

 

“Dunk your head and I'll help with your hair, if you like,” Molly offered, only slightly surprised that Caleb did so without apparent hesitation, snuffling a bit like Frumpkin when he needed to sneeze upon surfacing.

 

“You are the expert,” he agreed, taking a rag and soap and getting to work on his skin, while Molly scooted in to work at his hair.

 

“So,” Molly said, dripping a little out on to his fingers and then examining Caleb's hair for particularly bad snarls, “Beau may be new management, but you're the brains of our proverbial outfit. What do you think we need to go after the Iron Shepherds this time? Muscle, magic?”

 

“A cleric,” Caleb said without hesitation.

 

“Are there many mercenary clerics in your experience?” Molly asked skeptically.

 

“In _my_ experience, there are seldom any who are not,” Caleb replied cryptically, “but my experience was not universal. We need someone who can heal. I am not interested in some or all of us being killed or enslaved. We will have to find out what Ophelia Mardun wants with us as well.”

 

Caleb scrubbed his face vigorously.

 

“Healing is paramount. Then magic. I do not think that there is muscle powerful enough to defeat Lorenzo's abilities.”

 

Molly nodded.

 

“He cast that spell that froze everything. I take it that's not an easy one.”

 

“Very difficult, in fact,” Caleb said. “But he did not seem to use many others. I may have an advantage there, if it is some natural affinity in him. He may be vulnerable to flame. If I had been closer in our first fight, perhaps I would have… well. I will have to be closer.”

 

Caleb fell silent, working soap into his stubble and under his fingernails, scrubbing until his skin was quite pink. Molly worked around his movements, carefully picking apart the greater tangles with oiled claws before switching to the wider toothed of the two combs.

 

“Well,” Molly said, trying to think. He wasn't a tactician, just a showman, just a carnie with a couple swords and a couple weird blood powers. “I'll try to make sure you're still not closest, how about that?”

 

Caleb paused.

 

“We will have to see what we can lay hands on between then and now, ja? For now, we do not know where exactly we are going, how many we are facing, what they will have, what _we_ will have. Any plan we make right now would be less than a rough outline. Barely a concept beyond ‘kill and do not be killed.’”

 

Molly sighed.

 

“Right, right. Where the hell is Nott with the booze?” he muttered. Caleb waved his hand at his coat.

 

“My wire should be in the inside pocket, just behind the button that has a mermaid on it.”

 

“A mermaid? And Nott hasn't stolen it?”

 

“She is the one who gave it to me, and all the others. She has not stolen it a second time.”

 

Molly chuckled, set the combs on the edge of the tub, and retrieved the wire, handing it off to Caleb.

 

“You're getting pruney,” he pointed out, noting the wrinkles the water had left on Caleb's fingertips. Caleb just shrugged and twisted the wire just so and spoke.

 

“Nott, are you all right? You've been gone a while. You can reply to this message.”

 

After a moment, Caleb smiled faintly.

 

“She is having a ‘girls night’ with Beauregard,” Caleb said, tossing the wire back towards his coat. “She left the wine right outside the door for you.”

 

Caleb took up the comb and got to work on his own hair, pulling ruthlessly through any remaining tangles.

 

“It hurts my head just watching you, stop that,” Molly scolded, but got up and opened the door anyway, finding the wine hidden under a washrag.

 

“Well, what do you recommend instead?” Caleb asked when he returned, comb halfway through a tangle that was bordering on a matt. Molly rolled his eyes again.

 

“Here, open this,” he ordered, nabbing the comb from Caleb's hand and replacing it with the wine bottle.

 

Over the next half hour or so, Molly carefully worked the tangles out of Caleb's hair, got him to soap it up and rinse it again, and then carefully worked more of the scented oil from roots to the tips, gently massaging his scalp. All the while, they passed the bottle, filled with a blackfruit brandywine, back and forth. Nott had chosen a lovely vintage.

 

“Surely the water's gone cold by now,” Molly asked eventually. Caleb just held up his faintly glowing hand. “You cheater.”

 

Caleb laughed at that and got up, pulling the drain plug.

 

“Ja, that's true,” he said, grabbing a towel and wrapping it about his waist. “Once it's drained, I'll fill it and heat it again.”

 

“You're a saint,” Molly beamed.

 

“It is the least I can do, given that you kept me from tearing my hair out. It is too cold for bald patches up here,” Caleb said.

 

“Well, seems that it's in all our best interests to keep Artagan happy,” Molly shrugged. “Did he teach you how to do Pumat's trick?”

 

Caleb looked over his bare shoulder, brows knitting.

 

“Pumat has many tricks.”

 

“The cleaning one.”

 

“Prestidigitation?” Caleb tilted his head, going through some information in his mind. “Ja, I think so… why?”

 

Molly looked at his shirt, which still had a great gaping hole in it, stiff with his own dried blood.

 

“Because this is a bit awful,” he replied, pulling the shirt over his head.

 

“Ah,” Caleb answered. When Molly got free of it, Caleb was right in front of him, hand out for it. “Ja, so it is. I will see what I can do.”

 

Molly nodded, stripping off the rest of his clothing and handing it all over to Caleb. Once the tub was mostly drained, put the plug back in and started pumping fresh water into it.  Having filled it again, Molly was tempted to plunge himself into the cold and start scrubbing his skin, but he stepped away, going back to the cabinet of the soaps and oils. For himself, Molly chose the most lightly scented things he could find, a soap with just a hint of sandalwood, an oil that smelled only slightly of black tea.  

 

He glanced over at Caleb, who had laid Molly’s shirt, jerkin, coat, and leggings out over a table. Caleb had a bit of a distant look on his face, which Molly was assuming was him browsing whatever library of spells had been bequeathed to him by Artagan inside his own head.

 

“Caleb?” Molly asked.  “Are you in there?”

 

Caleb started out of his reverie, ducking his head in self-consciousness.

 

“Ah, ja, sorry.  I can clean them, but I am afraid that mending them is beyond me, at least for now,” he said. “I believe that I have a needle and thread, though.”

 

Caleb twisted his fingers in a way that made Molly fumble his bar of soap for a moment, and murmured something in a language Molly didn’t understand but that his tail seemed to, curling and intrigued, and the bloodstain vanished from the shirt like it was never there.

 

Molly lost his breath for a moment, exhaling and then desperately trying to get it back, and Caleb was back by his side before he could breathe out again.

 

“What happened?” Caleb asked, hand just above Molly’s bare chest, over the scar from the glaive, just close enough that Molly could feel the heat off his skin. “Can you breathe? Are you all right?”

 

Molly set his hand over Caleb’s, pressing it to the scar for a moment, grounding himself with the feeling of his heart hammering against a foreign pressure.

 

“Yes,” Molly said, staring at their hands before making himself look up at Caleb’s face. “No, yes, I just… it threw me, watching the blood disappear. I’m fine.”

 

Caleb’s eyes searched Molly’s, and Weaver help him, no wonder Caleb avoided eye contact. Molly couldn’t imagine how Caleb would be able to navigate through life, interacting with people who felt like Molly did, _seen,_ so seen, lanced through as thoroughly as he’d been by that glaive.

 

“You put up a good facade,” Caleb said at last, “playing off that dying did not bother you.  I should have known better.”

 

Molly bristled slightly, and Caleb’s fingers twitched.

 

“I am not judging you,” Caleb said quickly. “I am judging myself, for not having realized.”

 

“Well… quit it,” Molly said, squeezing Caleb’s hand and letting go. “There’s no reason for it. Being dead doesn’t stick to me, it’s stupid that _dying_ is what throws me off my game.”

 

Caleb gave Molly an unimpressed look.

 

“Think about that statement. _Dying_ is what it takes to throw you off your game,” Caleb said, gently patting Molly’s chest and stepping back. “You are also missing your closest friend. This is hardly a normal situation by anyone’s imagining.”

 

Well fuck. Caleb was just going to lay all of _Molly’s_ cards on the table like that?

 

“Yeah,” Molly sighed, leaning down and picking up the soap he had dropped, trying to ignore the fact that Caleb was still only clad in a thin towel, and that Molly himself was completely nude. Caleb stepped back and stuck his hands back into the bath, heating the water once more.

 

“Is this warm enough?” Caleb asked after a moment.  Molly stepped in and settled down, considering.

 

“Hotter, if you wouldn’t mind,” he requested. Caleb sank his hands in, close but not touching Molly’s skin, moving them to make sure he wasn’t boiling a single spot of water that might burn Molly.

 

Molly chuckled.

 

“That feels so strange. Amazing strange, but strange,” he said as he felt the currents of warmer water travel over his skin.

 

“Let me know when to stop, I do not want to overdo it,” Caleb replied.

 

“Oh I don’t know, I’m pretty burn-resistant, and I’ve never had a magical whirlpool bath before,” Molly answered cheekily.  Caleb’s expression didn’t change in the slightest as he made a fist in the water and squirted Molly in the face with one quick squeeze. “ _Rude!_ ”

 

Caeb just gave Molly a twitch of a smile and dried his hands on his towel, unwrapping the soap Molly had chosen and breathing it in, looking confused, then leaning in closer and breathing deeper.  

 

“No patchouli?” Caleb asked, handing it over, and smelling the oil as well. Molly opened his mouth, shut it again, and sighed, sinking further into the water.

 

“Normally I’d make some hilarious quip and tease you about not liking the way I smell naturally, but I don’t have it in me at the moment.”

 

“You do not owe me any humor about this situation, Molly. I have no desire to make light of it,” Caleb assured him. Molly held his hand up in front of his own face.

 

“Death has a very distinctive scent,” Molly said softly. “I want to make sure that scent is _gone,_ not just covered up.  Gone.”

 

Caleb shut his eyes for a moment, then nodded, opening them again.

 

“I will make sure your clothes smell like nothing but clothes, then,” he said, placing the soap in Molly’s hand and the phial of oil on the tub’s edge.  Molly could smell the honey and the rum of the scents Caleb had chosen for himself as he leaned close, and thought that would be pleasant enough until he’d reassured himself that he was _alive._

 

“Do you want me to close the curtain?” Caleb asked him.

 

“No,” Molly said immediately, probably too harshly.  “I don’t want to be alone, so… please don’t go out of sight?”

 

Molly felt pathetic, but Caleb just patted his shoulder and turned back to the table.

 

“Let me know if you want help with your hair, and I will do what I can,” he said, and got back to work prestidigitating all of their clothes as clean as when they were new, if not as unworn, pausing between each casting of the cantrip. Molly watched as Caleb raised Molly’s shirt to his face and took a deep breath.

 

“I think that will be enough, but if you can still detect something amiss, I can do this more, and will until you are satisfied,” Caleb said, getting to work on his own clothing.  “If it still disturbs you, please tell me, and if you like, you may wear my clothes until we can replace yours.”

 

Molly nearly dropped the soap, again.

 

“That’s… that’s really sweet of you to offer.”

 

Caleb didn’t reply to that, only shrugged.  Molly got to work, and started to _scrub._ Every inch of his skin, from beneath every well trimmed toe-talon (Molly liked his boots far too much to let them be pierced by his own toenails), between his toes, every single crevice and surface of himself, just this side of hard enough to draw blood.

 

Caleb had apparently finished with their clothes, because Molly saw him pulling his own underclothes on, though he didn’t yet bother his trousers or a shirt, instead bringing over Molly’s shirt in his hand.

 

“Would you like to check my work?” he asked Molly, offering it up. Molly leaned in, bracing himself, and…

 

Nothing. Just linen. Not a trace of blood, the grave, or even sweat.

 

“As fetching as I think you’d look in my clothes,” Molly said, “you’re amazing. I can’t smell a thing.”

 

Caleb huffed what might have been a laugh, laying Molly’s cleaned clothes on the bed and going to his own pack to search for needle and thread, finding it and sitting at the foot, taking up the shirt and starting to mend it manually.

 

“It is for the best,” Caleb shrugged. “I do not think that your coat has enough pockets for my components.”

 

Molly chuckled.

 

“Well, ask your sugar daddy what he _wants_ you to be wearing, and once we’re all back together in a place with proper shops, I’ll help you dress the part,” he replied. If Caleb had any comment on that, Molly didn’t hear it as he dunked his head under water, getting to work on washing and oiling his hair.  

 

Caleb made short work of Molly’s shirt, but the leather of the jerkin was too thick for the needle he had, so that had to remain rent for now, but at least it was all clean, at last, though Molly did wonder where all that life’s blood vanished _to._ Was it pooling at the feet of Artagan, somewhere in the feywild?

 

Molly prefered to imagine that it was being pulled into the veins of Caleb’s own magic, rather than his death just… vanishing. He prefered to imagine that it was being kept safe somewhere. He considered asking Caleb, but Molly didn’t want his wishful thinking shattered.

 

“You are now the one who is getting pruney,” Caleb commented, getting up and going through the cabinet himself, searching for something and emerging with a straight razor, a brush, and a bowl.

 

“Well, I have a wizard-warlock who will reheat my bathwater whenever it gets cold,” Molly replied. Caleb just rolled his eyes and strode over, scooping a bowlful of Molly’s own bathwater out and plunking himself down in front of a large, three paneled mirror.  Molly was fairly sure that if he breathed on it at the right height, he’d see handprints left behind. “Or who’ll just steal it, that’s fine too.”

 

“We need to be up early tomorrow to get the people we need to get and to rescue our friends,” Caleb said, dipping the brush into the water and working up a lather on the bar of soap he’d used before. “And you almost certainly still need rest to be at your best for any fights we might have.  So please. Get out of the bath, get dry so that you do not catch a cold, and go to bed.”

 

Molly grumbled, but obeyed, grabbing a towel for himself and picking up the comb to stand behind Caleb.  If Caleb was bothered by Molly looming over him and primping his own hair, he didn’t show it, concentrating instead on lathering his face and carefully, carefully shaving himself cleanly.  He looked even younger than when Yasha had done it for him, Molly thought, the straight razor much easier to use, and Caleb much more familiar with his own anatomy than Yasha. When finished, he got up, dumping the bowl into the tub and rinsing the blade before pulling the plug again and tidying up everything that they had used.

 

Molly, meanwhile, pulled on his leggings and picked up the remaining wine. At loose ends, he sat on the bed, wiggling his feet under the covers.

 

“You still owe me a reading,” Molly pointed out, tucking his knees up to his chest.  Caleb glanced over at him, pulling on his shirt.

 

“Did you get your cards back from Beauregard when I was not looking?” he asked.

 

“Fuck!” Molly swore, thunking his head back against the headboard. “I don’t think I’m brave enough to walk in on whatever constitutes a Nott and Beau girls night.”

 

“Another time, then,” Caleb shrugged. “It has been a long day.”

 

Molly chewed on his lower lip.

 

“And tomorrow’s going to be longer,” he sighed.  Caleb reached out for a pillow, eyeing one of the fainting couches, and Molly rubbed his hands over his face. “Please don’t-- please sleep in the bed? I mean, if it’s… fuck, I’m sorry.”

 

Caleb tilted his head.

 

“It’s all right,” he said. “Say what you are thinking. It’s all right.”

 

“I really don’t want to be alone,” Molly confessed. “I know it’s stupid. I can sleep above the covers if you want, or we can put up a wall of pillows--”

 

Caleb didn’t bother to shush him, just turned down the lamps and set about setting his silver thread around the room. When he was done, he messaged Nott to let her know that it had been set, and then climbed into the bed without any ceremony.

 

“I know I’m being ridiculous--” Molly apologized, but Caleb tutted softly.

 

“You are not,” he said. “You are not.  Frumpkin is a bird right now, but do you want him here?”

 

“No, no, this is… having you here is good,” Molly said.

 

“I will try not to take possession of your tail again, but once I am asleep…” Caleb trailed off, and with his darkvision, Molly could see him shrug.

 

“I don’t mind,” Molly said, stretching his legs out and scooting down until the covers were up to his chin. “It’s probably going to wind up wound around whatever limb gets close enough.”

 

They were silent for a moment, each of them adjusting and getting comfortable, eventually facing each other.  

 

“I do not mind that either,” Caleb said at last, rolling onto his side to face Molly’s direction. “So, we can agree that we will not judge each other if we move around a bit in our sleep.”

 

“Judgement-free zone,” Molly agreed, perhaps too quickly.

 

They lay there in silence, until at last Caleb said:

 

“You know, Molly, you took a great deal of trouble to make sure that I knew that we are friends, ja?”

 

Molly sighed.

 

“I did, sorry, tattling to Beau was a low blow--”

 

“No,” Caleb interrupted. “I think I am glad of it. But you are without Yasha, or Jester, or Fjord, the people with whom you seem the most at ease.”

 

Molly turned onto his side and squinted at Caleb.

 

“I'm not sure what you're getting at.”

 

Caleb huffed.

 

“I am saying that you can ask of me what you might ask of them. I am your friend, so… you have been through a terrible ordeal. If Yasha was here, how would you ask her to help you?”

 

Molly swallowed hard.

 

“I'd ask her to hug me, and hold me while I sleep,” he said. He heard the faint rustle of Caleb's hair against the pillowcase as he nodded.

 

“I am not Yasha, and I cannot hug you very hard, but…”

 

Caleb reached an arm out between them, the bed so large that his fingers just barely brushed Molly's arm.

 

The Moonweaver had warned Molly not to demand things of Caleb if he wasn't sure that he needed them, but Molly _needed_ this, and it was being offered. Even the advice of a goddess couldn't make him pause as he scooted over as quickly as he could, under Caleb's arm, against his thin chest. Under the oils and soap, Molly could still smell Caleb, that faint scent that reminded Molly of the night air before a snowfall, though he had only smelled that for the first time days ago.

 

They arranged themselves more easily than Molly would have predicted, Molly avoiding goring Caleb with a horn, Caleb's hand flat between his shoulders, rubbing gently, straying up to finger the curls at the nape of Molly's neck.

 

“All right?” Caleb asked, and Molly nodded.

 

_Caleb, I died,_ Molly thought, but didn't say, but it was like Caleb heard him anyway, nudging his chin over Molly's head and softly singing some lullaby in a language Molly didn't understand.

 

Sleep came gentle, and Molly didn't dream.


	8. Witchcraft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I'm alive. Short chapter as things were getting unwieldy, but hopefully this means I will be able to do more than one update per season. Some updated warning tags for some body horror on an unnamed, illusory character featuring insects. Will post a bit of notes on how I'm adhering, or rather not adhering, to 5E rules-as-written when I get home from work today. Anyway, hi!

Caleb’s consciousness woke into the Feywild. For the first time, he arrived standing up, and Artagan was pacing, disheveled. The moment he saw Caleb, Artagan dove at him, grabbing his shoulders.

“Where have you _been?_ ” Artagan demanded. Caleb, bewildered, raised his hands, hovering near Artagan's elbows, but not daring to try to remove his grasp.

 

“I… I have been awake. I woke at ten before seven; we traveled all day. I was taking care of some things, then I fell asleep at three minutes after nine, and now I am here--”

The last word was cut short with a gust of breath as Artagan wrapped his arms around him and squeezed Caleb tightly.

“You have to hurry, my darling witch,” Artagan pleaded, burying his face in Caleb's shoulder. “I have seen terrible, terrible things that will come to pass if you don't. Please.”

“We will leave before dawn tomorrow, but what is it that you have seen?” Caleb asked.

“I can't tell you or risk driving you right into that future; foretelling is dangerous in that way. All I can tell you is hurry, and that you must visit the Blooming Grove.”

Artagan released Caleb, stepping back, pacing again.

“What to teach, what to tell, there is so little time, what can your friends do--”

Artagan turned to direct his question at Caleb and trailed off.

“You look different,” Artagan said, sounding young and uncertain in a way that didn’t make sense from his immortal mouth.  Caleb ducked his head, rubbing his jaw. Apparently his grooming had carried over, which he supposed was for the best.

“Er… ja.  The best I could do at the time, but the place we have stopped to plan and stay the night has a bathtub, and lots of grooming supplies, so…” Caleb shrugged awkwardly.  Artagan moved closer, like a child trying to approach a wild animal, wondering, and reached out to touch Caleb’s face.

Caleb stayed still as Artagan felt along his newly smooth jaw, reached up and touched his hair.

“Is it--?” Caleb started, but Artagan just clapped his hand over Caleb’s mouth.

“Good.  It’s good. But I cannot be distracted by this right now.  The people still with you, Caleb, what can they do?”

Caleb glanced down at Artagan’s hand, which he removed.

“Keg, the dwarf, is very strong, but a coward.  Beauregard is a skilled fighter. Mollymauk can blind, or burn with cold or radiant light. Nott is excellent with her crossbow and very good at getting in on an enemy’s weak spots.  The firbolg woman seems able to do a little bit with healing herbs, but I am not sure how quickly she could help in a fight. She has said things about lightning which sound promising, but I imagine we will have to fight indoors.  And as for me, well, you know the things I am able to do.”

Artagan nodded, face gone tense and grim.

“If I only had more time, I could show you so much, but we will have to make do with what we have for now.  Sit, and tell me what you know about the ones you’ll be fighting.”

Caleb obeyed, Artagan sitting across from him, and described the ones they’d fought as best he could. Artagan’s interest, unsurprisingly, zeroed in on Lorenzo.

“To cast something so powerful as cone of cold, but then cast little else…” Artagan murmured.

“Odd, isn’t it?” Caleb agreed. “I was far off, but none of the others seemed to see any trinket or ornament that would be potentially enchanted.”

“And the weapon he used?”

Caleb’s mouth twisted.

“A glaive,” he hissed, the hateful thing that had taken Molly from them crystal clear in his mind.  

Artagan nodded, fingertips playing over his own lips, deep in thought.  

“Oni,” he said.  “This Lorenzo is not human.  When you go after them again, you must kill him _quickly,_ they are resilient creatures who will heal back up from almost anything until you are dead.  The spell I taught you, the one that you used to burn away your friend’s shroud? We call that faerie fire. Oni are able to turn invisible, so you may wish to use that. It will allow you to see him even if he vanishes.”

Caleb nodded, committing that fact to memory, and searching his own memory, his education, his history.

“Oni have no particular weaknesses,” Caleb recalled.

“Its weakness is someone killing it before it kills you,” Artagan replied. “You’ll need a healer; that takes more time to teach than we have.”

Caleb nodded.

“They have tried to teach me to heal in the past. I have no talent for it,” Caleb said. Artagan rose, and walked over to a shrub full of flowers around which bees were congregating, and appeared to hold some sort of conversation, whether with the shrub or its flowers or the bees, Caleb had no idea.

“There is a place… the Blooming Grove,” Artagan called back over his shoulder. “You’ll find your healer there, presiding over graves.”

Caleb blinked.

“...I am a little concerned about the abilities of a healer who presides over graves,” he admitted. Artagan rolled his eyes, coming back over to where Caleb sat and looming.

“He’ll be good for your group. Melora wants him to see the world, you need a cleric, problem solved. Your goblin, firbolg, dwarf, and human sound like they can be pull their weight. I'm not sure how useful your tiefling really is, though, to be terribly honest.”

Caleb bristled slightly, and Artagan put up an aggravated finger before he could argue.

“This isn't personal,” Artagan hissed. “It's about keeping my investments alive, you getting your friends back, and in your case, forwarding my interests on the mortal plane.”

“And what _is_ the interest I am meant to forward in this matter?”

Artagan sat before him again, the picture of ferocity.

“I want the Oni dead. I want his whole band dead. His actions offend me, and they offend the Archeart. I told you that your goals and mine would align; am I mistaken?”

“In this instance, you are not,” Caleb replied. “He killed one of my friends and has abducted three others, as well as at least one child. It is for the good of everyone that he and his supporters die.”

Artagan smiled, bright and cruel.

“Good,” he purred. He reached forward, tangling his hand into Caleb's hair and brought them together, brow to brow. “Very good indeed, _drazjistorya_ ; oh how proud and pleased you've made me.”

Artagan let him go, and a quill appeared in his hands, a bottle of ink on the ground, a book bound in green leather in his lap. Caleb leaned closer, fascinated as ever by the prospect of any book, but more so by any that came from the Feywild.  Artagan smiled, flipping it open.

“Dragonskin,” he said, smirking. “She called herself Miasma, and she tried to manipulate someone under my protection to be part of her horde.  Now the only thing she hordes are my papers, and the occasional erotic sketch.”

Artagan dipped his quill.

“Your companions’ abilities.  Go.”

Caleb obediently listed off everything that he was aware of that Beauregard, Nott, and Molly could do, with less information on Keg and Nila. Artagan ran the feather over his own jaw when he paused to ask for elaboration, the quill an oil-sheen black that picked up the tones of the deepest green ink that he used to write.  Caleb saw that there was already a column for himself, perfectly outlining every spell and mundane skill that he had.

“All right,” Artagan murmured.  “All right. I think I have an idea. Give me your spellbook.”

Caleb blinked, but obediently shrugged out of his coat and pulled out the first of his two books.  Artagan took it, flipping through the pages, chuckling at the little sketches that Jester had managed to work in throughout, until he found a blank page. Deftly, carelessly, Artagan started to write.

“This will open a circle in your world that will allow a portion of the feywild to bleed through,” he said, “one over which I have significant control, and in which I will leave some dreadful surprises. When you go to the Blooming Grove, collect some mushrooms. The cleric there may be able to give you some that are already dried. Grind them to a powder.”

Caleb nodded along, moving closer to sit at Artagan’s side. This was far different from Caleb’s usual spells. The things he had learned thus far were simple things, cantrips that Artagan had seemingly been able to plunk into his head through time spent together and nothing more. The spells Caleb had learned before Artagan, he had learned through careful study, dissecting them to determine every component part and how its energies worked with all the rest to form a whole. It was an intellectual exercise, primarily.

As he listened to Artagan and watched this spell form on the page of his spellbook, the parts could not really be dissected, none of the elements parsed into smaller bits.

“But how does it work?” Caleb asked, confused.  Artagan blinked at him, and then smiled, laughing brightly.

“It will work because of the sheer burning of you,” Artagan explained.  “This is not like your usual spells, dear boy, this is _witchcraft,_ born out of passion and will and our bond. It does not need analysis or fiddly bits to be so. It is because I will it to be so, and you will it to be so, and because our will, together, is luminous in a way that the mortal world cannot comprehend in any way other than magic.”

Caleb swallowed, trying to keep his hand from trembling as he reached out, touching the edge of the page where this new spell was written. He felt tipsier than when he had gotten drunk enough to waltz, dizzier than those times when Jester had brought him back from the brink of death.  

“All this time, you’ve found your power in discipline and restraint because you feared to burn the world up,” Artagan said, placing his free arm around Caleb’s shoulders, “but there are some things which must be what they are and nothing else. The essence of you must be what it is, and nothing else.”

“But I am a monster,” Caleb whispered.

“No,” Artagan said, “you are a force unlike any other, and you are chosen by me, and that makes  you more than a monster, and more than a man. The essence of you is undiscovered to you and to me, but I am certain that it is not that of a monster.”

“What else could it be?” Caleb argued.

“I have _no idea,_ ” Artagan answered, absolutely grinning from ear to ear.  “Isn’t that such fun?”

He set down his quill and took Caleb’s hand.

“Now.  You will dip the index finger of your left hand into the mushroom powder, and draw a spiral, widdershins, from outside to in on the palm of your right hand. Clap your hands together, and then throw your arms wide to represent my welcome to your enemy.  Show me.”

Caleb mimicked the motions, and Artagan in turn clapped his approval.  

“Perfect!  This spell will require some focus, so try not to get hurt while all this is going on, and don’t allow anything to distract you.”

Caleb peered at the glyphs on the page, but this was so different from his usual spells, arcane, but in a much more intuitive way than a cerebral one, and finally, he had to ask:

“What does it do?”

Artagan grinned.

“I’ll gladly show you,” he replied, sitting up straight, drawing the symbol on his hand, clapping, and throwing his arms wide. Caleb, having to fall back onto his elbows to avoid being clotheslined, watched in wonder as the spell took effect.

While this bit of the Feywild was always the noon of a midsummer day, a great dome of twilight dimness bloomed in a twirling spiral, up and out nearly twenty feet in every direction. Artagan rose and offered his hand, helping Caleb up.  

“Look, but don’t touch,” he said, and with another gesture, conjured an illusory ogre in the middle of the dome. Illusion or not, it was apparently enough to trigger whatever effect the spell was designed to produce.   

Shadows flickered on the surface of the dome, and an invisible wind blew across the grass, Even through the dimness, Caleb could make out bright green sparks of light, blinking in and out.

“Fireflies?”

“Yes,” Artagan said, standing behind Caleb and putting his hands on his shoulders, resting his chin on the left one, “but wait.”

Rather than winking aimlessly, the fireflies formed a slow moving swarm around the ogre, and one by one began to light upon its skin. The moment they made contact, there was a hissing _pop,_ and the light went from on the ogre’s flesh to just under it, then deeper, the bright green glow diffused as they burned small holes. The ogre tore at itself, but they just kept going, boring their way through, some emerging from the other side like one of Nott's crossbow bolts only to fly free and land again, others taking circuitous paths, meandering carelessly through muscle and bone.

“Just an illusion for demonstration, but you get the drift,” Artagan smiled.

“What is to stop it from just walking out of the circle?” Caleb asked.

“Nothing, technically,” Artagan replied, emphasizing the first syllable in an achingly familiar way, “but from within, the bubble is a phantasmal wall of green flame. Not truly there, but whatever is within will believe it to be, to the point that it will think itself burned if it tries to pass, unless it is very, very clever.”

“It is amazing,” Caleb whispered, “and beautiful, in its way.”

“Would it be my work if it were otherwise?” Artagan asked, snapping the ogre out of existence and waving his hand. The bubble faded into motes of shadow, floating apart like ashes, and suddenly all was sunlight again.

“Use it,” Artagan said, stepping around and putting both hands on Caleb’s shoulders.  “It will be beautiful, and it will be _justice,_ oh, it will be so perfect, Caleb.  Promise me.”

“If I am able,” Caleb said. “I must rescue our friends first, but I doubt we will be able to do that without killing Lorenzo. I will make every effort.”

“Of course, save them first, of course,” Artagan said, reaching up to cradle Caleb’s jaw in his hands. “I believe in you, little witch. Together… we’re going to do many great things.”

Caleb closed his eyes as Artagan kissed his forehead, and when he opened them again, he was in the tatty luxury of his room in the Landlocked Lady.


	9. Tasseography

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our glacially-paced journey continues! Just figured I'd sneak this out there while everyone else is watching that Game of Thrones shindig. 
> 
> The group makes plans, receives some advice and directions, and picks up a new friend. 
> 
> Content warnings for this chapter: Non-consensual touching, food stuff that might be triggering for some (a single item of food is eaten far too quickly), and an anxiety attack. Please see end notes for some notes on updated tags for future chapters.

Mollymauk was still tucked tightly against his chest, Caleb’s chin still nestled atop his head, breath blowing curls softly. Caleb’s fingers were still loosely in Molly’s hair, and Molly’s tail had wound around Caleb’s left thigh, just above the knee. 

 

Caleb could certainly credit Artagan with helping him sleep better. 

 

It was just past five in the morning, which was good. Early enough for Caleb to get the preparation and planning  _ for _ the day’s preparation and planning done in his head, so he could present it for Beau’s criticism and revision.  

 

But he could do that without waking Molly. He could be here, and do what he needed to do, without breaking Molly’s half of this peace.

 

That decision was taken out of his hands by a violent pounding on the door. Caleb released Molly instantly, rolling into his back so that his one free hand faced the door, ready to shield them both or blast whomever into oblivion the moment the door opened.

 

“Wake up, guys, we've got shit to do!” Beau roared on the other side, moving down the hallway to bellow at Nila and Keg as well. Caleb sagged back to the bed, exhaling. Molly wriggled closer after a moment, tucking his chin onto Caleb's chest. He sighed, breath warm against Caleb's neck. 

 

“Your heart's racing,” Molly murmured, sleep-rough. “Five more minutes. Just a few more minutes before we have to go out there and face everything and everyone else. It'll take that long for Beau to get Keg and Nott and Nila going. There's not much to pack. Just a few more minutes.”

 

Caleb shut his eyes and rolled back towards Molly, folding his arm over Molly's back again. Some things were so, so easy to give when they were asked for. Caleb wished that he could ask so easily, that he could be as brave as Molly and take someone at their word that it was all right to ask for what you needed.  But for now, Molly was asking for things that Caleb would have asked for himself, if he was brave, so he could pretend, just for a moment, that it was that easy. 

 

“Ja,” he said. “Okay.”

 

Molly sighed and cuddled in close.

 

“That was the best sleep of my life,” Molly said, voice muffled against Caleb's chest. “And the life before that.”

 

Caleb just hummed, holding Molly a little tighter, wishing he wasn't quite so aware of each passing second of the four minutes and some odd seconds left of the five minutes they'd negotiated. 

 

“I’m glad,” Caleb said after a bit. “Did the Moonweaver visit you again?”

 

Molly shook his head as much as he could against Caleb’s chest without damaging him with his horns. 

 

“No, just… sleep. Good sleep. What about you, did you have any more revelations in the feywild?”

 

Caleb sighed.

 

“I’m not sure that I will be going anywhere else when I sleep ever again, which is not so bad. Artagan taught me a new spell, and told me where we will find someone to help us,” Caleb replied, and then swallowed. “He also said that we must hurry, so we will have to act today. How are you feeling?”

 

Molly stretched his legs out behind him, uncurling his arms from around Caleb and stretching out like Frumpkin.

 

“Pretty great, comparatively, but I feel…” Molly considered his next words. “I feel exceptionally myself. In a good way.”

 

Caleb pushed himself up to a sitting position, turning his head to pop the joints in his neck. 

 

“What’s the spell?” Molly asked. Caleb shrugged, scrubbing his hands through his hair, slightly startled at the smoothness of his face and the lack of tangles.

 

“I do not think it has a name, but I think I’ve seen Fjord do something similar. It creates a bubble of space that crosses into the Feywild, and Artagan has laid traps there. As long as I can maintain it, and it should last a while, and as long as our enemies stay in it, they will suffer terrible damage.”

 

Molly nodded, holding his hand out ahead of himself, apparently regarding his own tattoos.

 

“Sounds horrifying, but whatever gets our friends out, I’m okay with..”

 

Caleb shrugged, staring into the distance before dropping his gaze to pick at his bandages.

 

“I am okay with anything that gets us through this alive,” Caleb answered, picking at a loose thread on the blanket, then getting up. Molly might well not be okay with  _ that, _ with just how far Caleb knew himself to be capable of going. All Caleb could do was try to warn him, as well as the rest of the Nein, over and over.

 

“Hey, no, that’s…” Molly pushed himself to sit upright and brushed his fingers against Caleb’s back. “Hold up.”

 

Caleb turned, half-looking at Molly.

 

“I'm not judging you, Caleb,” Molly said, with an expression that Caleb had difficulty reading. 

 

“You should,” Caleb murmured.

 

“I'm not, though,” Molly insisted, hand sliding up over Caleb’s shoulder blade to squeeze gently. “I'm fucking scared, but I'd be far more scared if you weren't with us. I'm not judging you.”

 

Caleb nodded reluctantly. 

 

“We should get ready,” he said. 

  
  
  
  


Molly got up, gathering the clothes that Caleb had cleaned and mended for him and pulling his shirt over his head. Caleb was winding his silver thread back onto its spool, and Molly noticed that Caleb had stitched his shirt back together with some of the same. 

 

“Don't you need this?” Molly asked Caleb, turning and holding the mended bit of his shirt.

 

Caleb looked up, checking the pockets of his coat, ensuring that every component was where it should be, about to tuck the spool away as well.

 

“It is the nature of the stuff,” Caleb explained awkwardly. “Just… something that doesn't run out, only valuable to me, really.”

 

Molly almost opened his mouth, and almost told Caleb that there were so, so many things that Caleb had, even less tangible than silver magic thread, that wouldn't run out, that were far more valuable to Molly. Almost, but he thought better of it, knowing what they were about to go face again.

 

Instead he said,

 

“When this is over, we're going to celebrate.”

 

Caleb huffed a tiny, dubious laugh.

 

“I'm serious,” Molly insisted. “So you'd better start thinking about  _ how _ you want to celebrate or I'll just have to guess, and I don't think you're prepared for that.”

 

“I'm not much of a celebratory sort.”

 

“When this is over, I'm going to celebrate being alive, all of us,” Molly pressed. “Please figure out a way to join me, clever wizard, all right?”

 

Caleb looked slightly perplexed. Molly wondered if it was because he had trouble with the idea of celebrating, or just the idea of being alive being something to celebrate.

 

“Ja,” Caleb said at last. “I'll think about it.”

 

Molly couldn’t hold back the joyous smile that overtook him, and he thought he saw Caleb’s mouth twitch before he ducked his head.

 

Caleb left the room first, but lingered in Molly's eyeline just outside the door as Molly took one more moment to try to commit this frayed room, playing at luxury, to his unreliable memory.

 

“Shame we can't take the room with us,” Molly said, pulling on his coat and shouldering his bag, following Caleb out. “It's kind of perfect.”

 

Caleb neither agreed or scoffed, just took one last look himself, then pulled the door closed and locked it behind them.

 

Downstairs, Beau was loading up on breakfast foods, Nott was already devouring a plate of meat, while Nila and Keg talked quietly about the area.

 

“Morning, beautiful losers,” Keg greeted them as soon as they got close.

 

“Sleep all right?” Nott asked.

 

“Great, actually,” Molly said, and Caleb hummed in agreement. Molly elbowed him gently, grinning. “Caleb got more insider info from his sugar daddy.”

 

Caleb groaned at that, but was spared further embarrassment when Beau pointed at him, bacon dangling from one side of her mouth like a cigarette.

 

“Info,” she said. “Go.”

 

Caleb cleared his throat, and recounted the details of what Lorenzo was, and that Caleb had learned a new spell that might help and where they might find a cleric.

 

“Keg, you know where this Grove shit is?” Beau asked.

 

“Heard of it, never been,” Keg said, chewing on a hangnail. “But I'd be down to go check it out instead of getting my head cut off if a Mardun guard recognizes me, from like… before.”

 

“Splitting up? Really?” Beau glared. 

 

“Our time is running out,” Caleb said softly. “So long as we are together against Lorenzo, that is what will matter.”

 

“...fuck,” Beau growled. “Nila, you're good with the woods and rough terrain, Nott, you're sharp as fuck. You three to the Grove, me, Caleb and Molly to the Marduns?” 

 

“I don’t want to split up,” Molly blurted, unaware of his own feelings on the matter until he heard himself saying it.  

 

“I agree,” Nott said immediately, cutting Molly off before he could backpedal.  “Anything we can gain from the time saved splitting up is nothing compared to losing someone else because we weren’t together.”

 

Molly pinned his tail between his ankle and the table let to keep it from lashing around.  The thought of Nott, Beau, or Caleb walking away from him made his gorge rise with terror, and Molly was absurdly grateful to Nott for making a logical case.  Beau glanced over at Caleb, who just shrugged, and she nodded. 

 

“Forrest first,” she said.  “The things that wanna kill us at night are probably asleep and the things that want to kill us in the day time probably aren’t awake yet.”

 

“Leaving the crepuscular,” Caleb muttered quietly.  Beau rolled her eyes, and Nott handed Caleb a plate of croissants. 

 

“There you go,” she said. Caleb took the plate, but looked utterly baffled.

 

“So…” Keg said sheepishly, clanking her spoon loudly against her plate and then wincing at the noise, “I don’t actually know where either of these places are.”  

 

Beau sighed, but Keg’s excuses were cut off.

 

“May we offer you any more tea?” 

 

A young half-elvish man had somehow approached their table completely unnoticed, a pale green teapot cradled in elegant hands.  

 

“Or perhaps something stronger?” he added, chuckling at their startled expressions. He tossed his head, making his high ponytail of red curls ripple prettily over his shoulder.

 

_ Contrived, _ Molly thought, narrowing his eyes. These invitations were initially made to the whole table, but each time, the half-elf’s gaze settled very deliberately on Caleb. 

 

“Fuck yes,” Keg said, at the same time as Nott said, “Stronger please.”

 

“No, we're working; fuck you both,” Beau snapped, pointing at each of them.

 

Caleb said nothing, but instead crammed an entire croissant into his mouth with alarmed, wide eyes looking briefly at the waiter before glancing off again.  Without waiting for a response, the waiter glided around the table, pouring tea and straightening silverware, steadying himself with a hand on Caleb’s shoulder.

 

“Actually, we could use directions,” Molly said loudly, with his biggest, toothiest grin plastered across his face. Caleb continued to look like a chipmunk smuggling away far too many seeds, but at least the waiter’s attention shifted off of him onto Molly.

 

“Oh?” he asked. Gods, he made a strange picture, posed behind Caleb, eyes as green as Caleb’s were blue, hair a much more vivid red, all elegance while Caleb tried to contend with the excessive amount of pastry he’d for some reason decided to devour all at once.  

 

“Yes,” Molly confirmed, leaning in, steepling his fingertips so that the point of each talon touched, smiling and showing as many as many teeth as possible. “We’re looking for a place called the Blooming Grove, do you know it?”

 

“And we’ve got a meeting with Ophelia Mardun,” Beau added. 

 

“One of my illustrious employers, how fortuitous!” the man beamed, finger playing with the hair at the nape of Caleb’s neck.  Molly shot Beau a look as Caleb coughed, and she inclined her chin just slightly.

 

“Sorry, what’s your name?” she asked abruptly, leaning forward on one of her elbows in a way that made her bicep flex. 

 

“Keelyn,” the man replied serenely.  Beau gave a slow, deliberate nod.

 

“Keelyn.  So our friend there can’t really talk because he decided to just… vore a whole croissant for some fuckin’ reason, but he’s generally not cool with touching from strangers,” Beau said, smile thin as a garotte.  “If it turns out I’m wrong and he’s super into it? I’ll totally apologize, but yeah. Hands off.”

 

_ “Terribly _ sorry,” Keelyn purred, removing his hand from Caleb’s person and cupping it back around the belly of the teapot he held.  “In our line of work, tactility can become rather a habit.”

 

Molly narrowed his eyes in suspicion, about to point out that literally none of the other professionals seemed to be so very  _ un _ as to start touching without first getting the okay, but Caleb gently twitched his head from side to side.

 

“The Marduns are quite isolated, but if I can lay hands on parchment, I can draw you a map,” Keelyn said, apparently either not so offended as to withdraw an offer of help, or so terribly offended that he meant to give them directions off a cliff.

 

Caleb instantly produced some of his lesser quality paper, ink, and a quill and set them on the table.  Keelyn grinned at him broadly without a trace of surprise, murmuring,

 

“Clever boy.”

 

Caleb’s eyes briefly widened in shock, swallowing the last bits of croissant, before he composed himself.

 

“I am writing a travel guide,” Caleb explained, “for the seasoned adventurer.”

 

Keelyn nodded, setting down the teapot, uncorking the ink, and licking the nib of the quill once he was sure Caleb was watching him.  Molly in turn watched Caleb’s dry swallow, the apple of his throat bobbing. A feeling not unlike the acid bitterness Molly had felt when he realized Caleb had trusted Beau with the story of his past and not Molly swelled in his gut.

 

_ No,  _ he thought firmly to himself.   _ Caleb gets to feel what he feels. If you have a problem with that, he was right not to trust you. _

 

“As it happens, the Blooming Grove is where we source some of our luxury teas. Much better than this swill.  Directions are a bit tricker to get you there, as it is very remote, and there is no road, but I am gifted with a little trick by which I can show one of you in your mind, if anyone is willing.”

 

This time, Keelyn pointedly didn’t look at Caleb, instead locking eyes with Molly in an apparent challenge.  At least, Molly was damn well going to take it as one. 

 

“I’m game,” he shrugged. Caleb cleared his throat, and Molly looked at him instead.

 

“It should be me,” Caleb said. “My memory, sense of direction…”

 

He shrugged.

 

“It should be me.”

 

Nott rose, standing on her seat with both hands planted on the table.

 

“But Caleb,” she hissed. “What about your…?”

 

She tapped her temple.  Caleb made no reply to her, and asked Keelyn,

 

“What do I have to do?”

 

“Just look into my eyes, clever boy,” he replied, raising a hand near Caleb’s cheek, but not touching it.  Molly shoved ruthlessly at his envy as their eyes locked.

 

“Do you see?” Keelyn asked, so softly, the moment much too intimate for a table full of idiots like them.

 

“I do,” Caleb said back, his posture relaxing visibly.  It was all Molly could do not to cast his maledict then and there, just to see those pretty green eyes bleed black.

 

“Excellent,” Keelyn said, straightening and dropping his hand and taking up the teapot once more, refilling Caleb’s cup.  “Well, should you wish to know anything further about our fine establishment for your travel guide, please come find me. In our business, a good review is priceless.”

 

Caleb just nodded and sipped his tea. Keelyn smiled, bobbed his head at the rest of the table, and swept on to the next.

 

“What,” Keg said, breaking the long moment of silence that had fallen, “the fuck.”

 

“Later,” Beau said.  Keg started to argue, and Beau slammed her hand on the table. “ _ Later.  _ We don’t have time to unpack whatever the fuck that just was.  We’ve got work to do.

 

Caleb nodded, and drained his cup.

 

The journey was largely quiet, a long trudge through the weird, sickly Savalier Wood.  Nila was in the lead, guiding the group through the strange terrain with a clever, otherworldly sense for even this corrupted nature, while Caleb remained close behind her, providing the directions.  

 

Eventually he stopped before an iron fence which was being tilted in toward the area it surrounded by the encroaching press of the woods.

 

“We are here,” Caleb said, and began scaling the fence like a man obeying an arcane command.

 

“Did that elfy fucker cast a spell on him?” Molly asked no one in particular.  

 

“Pretty sure he was trying to enchant his way onto Caleb’s dick, and I’m pretty sure it ain’t that long,” Keg scoffed.  Beau rolled her eyes while Nott got right in front of Keg’s face.

 

“Don’t talk about my Caleb like that,” Nott hissed.

 

“Look, you know more about his dick than I do--” she started in a tone so braying it had to be deliberate.

 

Not squawked in indignation and drew her crossbow.  Molly sighed and stepped in between them.

 

“Nott, give the nasty dwarf a pass,” he said, holding up his hands as Nott tried to get a clear shot at Keg.

 

“Revolting!” Nott sputtered. Keg ducked to look at Nott under Molly’s elbow, apparently completely unaware of how close she was to a bolt through the eye.

 

“For Caleb, yeah--” 

 

The end of Keg’s taunt cut off with a gurgle. Molly turned to see what horrifying Savalier mutation had hold of her, but it was only Beau.

 

“I got it from here,” Beau said, staff pressing on Keg’s throat. “Keg, let’s chat, one tactless asshole to another.”

 

Nott’s ears perked up as Beau dragged Keg aside.

 

“Caleb says we’re very loud and wants to know if anyone else is coming.  We can reply--”

 

“Oh for…” Molly rubbed his face and deftly scaled the fence.

 

If Molly had stayed dead, and if they had buried him, he was more sure than he’d been of anything in his life that these plants would be what grew from his grave.  They were impossibly vibrant, luminous in the dim light in a way that he hadn’t even known plants could be. It was also  _ warm  _ on this side of the fence, humid and tropical like a summer’s day.  Beautiful flying insects flitted about, one lighting on the tip of Molly’s horn and cocking its head to peer at him, while small creatures rustled in the underbrush about their business.

 

In the middle of it all was a little stone church. Caleb stood before the door, seemingly trying to work up the courage to knock when it opened on its own.  

 

“Hey there,” a soft, gravelly voice came from within. “You seemed a bit indecisive, there, I just thought I might go ahead and take the pressure off.”

 

Molly watched as Caleb looked up, and up, and then up some more, and stepped back away from the door to the little church, far enough to allow the person within to duck down and step out. 

 

A terribly thin, pale grey firbolg loomed over Caleb, bright pink hair cut close  part way up one side of his head to cascade over the other side. He wore a soft looking tunic with one long, winged sleeve, and he stood over seven feet tall.  Behind him, Molly heard the others clatter over the fence, and then a muffled squeal.

 

“You are a  _ firbolg! _ ” Nila exclaimed in delight. Nott lowered her crossbow slightly, asking:

 

“...do you know Pumat Sol?”

 

“ _ Stop asking every firbolg that, Nott! _ ” Keg hollered, Beau dragging her over the fence by the back of her armor. 

 

“Oh good,” Caleb said quietly.  “Everyone is here. Yay.”

 

The pink and grey firbolg grinned.

 

“Friends of yours?” he asked.  “I’m afraid I don’t have enough cups to go around, but you should come have some tea.” 

 

He returned to his temple, the others staring at each other, then came back out with a small tripod, a kettle, and a staff. They all gathered around the small fire pit he indicated, and he went back inside once more, returning with four small cups. 

 

“Please,” he said, tapping the bottom of the kettle with a staff topped with a giant chunk of amethyst, which started to heat of its own accord. He went over to one of the gravestones and plucked up several blossoms from the flowers growing in front of it. The color drained from Keg’s face. 

 

“I’m good,” Keg said, holding her tin cup towards Nott.

 

“Go fuck yourself,” Nott replied, glaring and clutching her flask to her chest. “I’m also good.”

 

The pink haired firbolg blinked as he returned, crouched down and lifted the lid of the kettle using his long, flowing sleeve to protect his hand, dropping the petals into the water.

 

“There seems to be… quite a bit going on here,” he said, replacing the lid and sitting on one of the logs positioned like benches around the fire.  “How can I ease your pain?”

 

Everyone was silent for a moment before Caleb shook himself free of the brief stupor.

 

“I’m sorry, we are being ruder than even we normally intend,” Caleb said, sitting down as well. “My name is Caleb Widogast, this is Nott, Mollymauk Tealeaf, Beauregard, Nila, and Keg. May I ask your name?”

 

“Caduceus,” the firbolg replied, “Caduceus Clay.”

 

Beau plunked down next to Caleb, closest to their potential new friend, and Molly settled himself down on Caleb’s other side.  Nila sat on Caduceus’ other side, Keg beside her, and Nott, after debating whether or not sitting next to Keg could possibly be worth it with Molly and Beau occupying her usual spots, went over and clambered into Caleb’s lap.  

 

After a few awkward moments, Caduceus poured the tea, Caleb and Beau sharing a cup, Molly and Nila receiving one each of their own. 

 

“Please, let me know what you think,” Caduceus asked.  Molly gently blew on his and took a sip. The flavor flowed smoothly over his tongue, like satin, clean and light, warming him like he’d been enfolded in a quilt.

 

“Tastes like warm blankets and clean sheets feel,” Molly murmured.  Caduceus made a surprised sound.

 

“Very observant,” he replied. “The Casalas were a textile family.  They make lovely tea, now, but… it’s not uncommon for one’s life to ingrain itself into the body.  Carries over to what comes after.”

 

“It is  _ delicious, _ ” Nila exclaimed.  Caleb and Beau glanced at each other, each sipping the tea.  

 

“I mean, I don’t really have a sophisticated palate for tea like apparently Molly does, but, yeah, that’s really fuckin’ tasty,” Beau said, snatching the cup back from Caleb and taking another deep slurp.  Caduceus gave her a wholly benign smile, seemingly completely unfazed by the vulgarity, or the overall… Beau-ness. 

 

“I’m very pleased you like it; thank you,” he said, “but people generally don’t come out all this way for tea. What tragedy have you suffered, and how may I be of service?”

 

Molly watched as Caleb swallowed hard, and whether the way Caleb shifted his foot so that his boot pressed against Molly’s was intentional or unconscious, Molly’s heart fluttered.

 

“A great tragedy indeed,” Caleb said, and Beau pressed the cup back into his hand. 

 

“A few of them,” she added.  “We have friends to rescue and friends to avenge.”

 

Caduceus nodded, reaching out to Caleb for the empty cup to refill it.  

 

“I’d love some more as well, if you’re offering,” Molly said, rising.  Caleb passed his cup to Molly, who took a quick glance at the shape of the dregs.  He couldn’t make out any clear images, and the cup itself had no handle, complicating the orientation of things, not to mention the fact that both Beau and Caleb had been drinking from the same cup. He handed both off to Caduceus, reminding himself, yet again, to get his cards back from Beau.  

 

Caduceus refilled them one by one and handed each back to Molly, locking eyes with him for a moment.

 

“Most people who come to my graveyard have had such an occurrence,” he said, nodding at Molly.  Molly’s brow knit slightly, but he let Beau keep taking the lead as he returned to his seat, carefully placing Caleb’s cup back in his hands.

 

“Please,” Caduceus continued.  “What happened?”

 

“One of our friends was murdered, three others kidnapped.  Our friend Nila’s son and partner were as well, and Keg has long experience and a score to settle with the ones responsible,” Beau said, neglecting to mention that the murder victim was sitting right there with them.  

 

Molly supposed that not being dead made him no less murdered, really, so he let it go.

 

“They’re called the Iron Shepherds,” Keg explained. “They’re slavers. All of those people are in cages, being tortured to break their wills so that they’ll be compliant with whoever they’re sold to.  It’s one of the worst fucking things that can happen to a person.”

 

Caleb winced, shutting his eyes, and Molly reached across to squeeze Nila’s hand.

 

“They deserve better,” Caleb murmured, strained.  “All of them deserve far better.”

 

The priest looked into his own teacup, thinking.

 

“I don’t know if I think that anyone deserves anything, but I don’t like cages,” he said.  “I’m more interested in keeping the natural order of things.”

 

Nila shook her head violently, squeezing Molly’s hand back.

 

“Slavery is not natural,” she insisted. “The Iron Shepherds deserve to die.”

 

“What she said,” Keg nodded. “But if murder doesn’t fall in your wheelhouse--”

 

Caduceus glanced up at that, face calm as ever, but with a slight, wry twist to his mouth.

 

“Have you  _ been _ in nature?” he asked. “Violence is extremely natural.  But Nila is right. Slavery is not.”

 

Caduceus stood up.

 

“I have a good feeling about you all,” he said, “and I’ve been looking to make a bit of a journey. The Wildmother did tell me I should be expecting some folk. If it’ll make people happy, there’s always a plant that could use some compost.”  

 

He rose, so much taller than the rest of them, save Nila, and smiled.

 

“I’ve just got a bit to pack.”

 

Molly jumped up.

 

“I’ll be happy to help,” he said, eager to learn more about this man, and eager to endear their group to him as much as possible. 

 

“That's great,” Caduceus said gently. “Help is really great.”

 

Molly caught Caleb’s eye briefly before following Caduceus inside the church.

 

_ We’re right outside,  _ the look seemed to say.  _ We’re not going anywhere without you. We won’t leave you. _

 

And if Molly took the fact that part of that “we” was also Caleb saying, whether he meant to or not, “I won’t leave you,” well.  That was no one’s damned business but Molly’s own.

 

Molly gave him a little smile and a wink, and maybe that brought a little color to Caleb’s face.  Satisfied, he followed Caduceus inside. 

 

“So, the Wildmother talks to you?” Molly asked, taking in the building, the surroundings, the colorful flora, the encroaching blight around the edges.

 

“She does, in her way,” Caduceus nodded, ducking down under the top of the doorway to go inside.  Molly wondered how old this building was, given that, had it been built by firbolgs, it would surely have been built with doorways tall enough for their height. Molly followed after him. Inside, the little church had four rooms, it seemed, the main area with a few stone benches and a table pushed off against one of the walls, gathering dust. Three smaller rooms were set off of the sides of the main one, three others.  Molly glanced into each-- The first looked to be some sort of master bedroom, a large raised platform with a lumpy, straw filled mattress, disused and dusty. The other two rooms were a bit smaller, with long, firbolg-height bunk beds made out of gnarled wood that looked like it had grown that way, one in each room. Of the two, one of the small rooms also had third bed crammed into it, also long. That was the only one that looked like it had been used recently.  

 

Many people lived here once, but now, only one. 

 

Caduceus walked into the room with the three beds, kneeling next to the freestanding one.  He pulled trunk out from underneath it. Out of that, he pulled a set of armor, green like the carapace of a beetle, with beautiful vivid of fleshy lobes of something like the things grew on the trees but fuchsia pink. He settled it over his head and shoulders, tightening the straps on the sides around his waist. He lifted more out after it, carefully stowing a great deal of jars, bottles, and pouches into a large satchel. 

 

“So,” Caduceus said as he packed, "tell me about these friends of yours.”

 

“Oh, where to begin? Fjord is a sailor from Port Damali, half-orc, honor from crown to toe. He's like some sort of hero out of a book, it's kind of amazing. Just fool enough to be interesting. Jester is the follower of some brand new God, never eats anything but sweets, loves romantic novels. Might love Ford. Absolutely absurd pranks. Yasha…” 

 

Molly's heart plummeted.

 

“I don't know how the fuck Lorenzo got the jump on Yasha,” Molly murmured, picking up a small wooden ball that was gathering dust on a shelf, idly tossing it from hand to hand.

 

“Lorenzo. Hmm.” Caduceus said, tasting the name. "He the one who killed you?”

Molly froze. The wooden ball clattered to the stone floor from his hand as his breath crushed out of him in panic. How? Caleb, none of them had mentioned that  _ Molly _ was the murdered friend. That  _ Molly _ had been dead. It must still be on him. He must still have the stink of death on him. Molly tried to call up his own abilities, the one that let him  _ feel _ when the undead were near but he had no idea if he'd be able to sense it in himself, like no one could rarely smell one’s own sweat or one's own bad breath. He lowered himself surprisingly carefully to the floor, feeling dizzy.

 

"Hey," Caduceus said, appearing before him, crouching down. His face was concerned, not disgusted or predatory or executioner-kind. "Breathe.”

 

Molly sucked in a breath, shuddering.  

 

“How did you know?" Molly gasped out, scooting backwards to get a better look at Caduceus, maybe run if he had to. Caduceus shrugged one shoulder, his armor catching the dim light that filtered through the window high on the wall.

 

“I have a sense for these things. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be callous.”

 

Molly's hand shot up into the air to stop him talking, hovering there as Molly forced himself to ask:

 

“Then tell me. Am I a revenant?”

 

Caduceus blinked in shock. 

 

"No," he said. "No, not at all.” 

 

Molly raised his head to lock eyes with him.

 

“Then I'm alive.” 

 

Caduceus nodded.

 

“Extremely.” 

 

Molly let his hand fall away, put his head between his knees, and breathed through the last of his panic. 

 

"You okay?” Caduceus asked, hand hovering over Molly's shoulder but not touching. 

 

"Will be,” Molly wheezed in answer. 

 

“I really am sorry. I'm… you're not the sort of survivor I'm used to comforting.”

 

And just like that, Molly wasn't panicking anymore, because he was laughing. He couldn't breathe because he was laughing, pulling him upright until his head was thrown back and his whole body shook. He couldn't breathe because of the unintentional hilarity of that statement, rather than the terror of the one before it. He wound down, taking a deep breath and sighing. 

 

“I am," Molly replied, locking eyes with their strange new possibly friend whose worry was abating at last. "I am a very different kind of survivor to be sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So: In the next chapter or the one that follows, there will be a non-graphic but still disturbing description of torture during an interrogation. I'm thinking that I may make it its own chapter to make it easier for people to skip, possibly out of an overabundance of caution. Tags on the fic have been/will be updated accordingly.

**Author's Note:**

> Tags and rating likely to change as this progresses. Starts out with the sort of stilted language I always imagine in fairytales, but then gets a bit more natural. Unbetaed, mostly because, well, I don’t know anyone in this fandom, so all mistakes are my very own. They’re all my favorite, and since Caleb is one of them, he is my favorite, so please forgive me for making him trash wizard Jesus or something. 
> 
> Me: I respect the choices of the DM & players of Critical Role. 
> 
> Also me: I’m gonna bring Molly back every way I know how and then make up some new ones until he’s brought back on the show, and if he never is, that’s fine, I’ll just keep fuckin’ writing them even if no one ever reads them but me. 
> 
> I haven’t finished the first campaign by a long shot, so Artagan is based on his description in the Wiki and the couple clips I saw of him as himself.
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr at runekeepershymnal, if you like.


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